Lisée | Laïcité, deuxième tour

2024/02/22 Leave a comment

On the renewal of the notwithstanding clause for Loi 21. Appears like CAQ just wants to renew legislation as is but Lisée argues for some more restrictive provisions, including greater consistency for all religions:

Il est formidable, ce délai de cinq ans. Il y a des contraintes comme ça, qui nous semblent excessives au premier abord, mais qui nous rendent service à l’usage. Cinq ans, c’est le délai après lequel les législateurs, comme les nôtres à l’Assemblée nationale, doivent décider s’ils renouvellent ou non la disposition de dérogation. Celle qu’ils ont attachée à une loi pour dire aux juges : « Pas touche. Nous avons décidé qu’en ce cas précis, les élus, plutôt que les juges, vont rendre un arbitrage entre les droits individuels et les droits collectifs. »

Le sens des mots est important, et le fait que l’on « déroge » à une charte des droits est très négativement connoté. C’est pourquoi le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec tente d’y substituer l’expression « clause de souveraineté parlementaire ». Une autre vraie façon de voir la chose. Un peu comme la séparation et l’indépendance.

Il y a cinq ans déjà que la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État québécois a été adoptée. Notez que le système juridique canadien n’a même pas été capable, pendant cet assez long délai, de donner son dernier mot sur la constitutionnalité de ce texte législatif. On a eu un jugement de la Cour supérieure en avril 2021. Prenant son temps, la Cour d’appel a entendu les parties en novembre 2022. Prenant encore plus son temps, elle n’a pas donné signe de vie depuis. Et quoi que disent ces augustes juges, on ira ensuite en Cour suprême, chez des gens qui ne sont pas non plus connus pour leur célérité.

Cette révision à pas de tortue donne raison aux parlementaires qui ont voté pour la loi et pour sa clause de souveraineté parlementaire, et donc son application immédiate dans le réel, soit ceux de la Coalition avenir Québec et du Parti québécois (PQ). Sinon, on n’aurait vraisemblablement jamais pu appliquer les aspects de la loi qui interdisent le port de signes religieux chez les policiers, les gardiens des prisons provinciales et les enseignants du primaire et du secondaire. (La loi prévoyait de l’interdire aux juges québécois, mais ces derniers ont usé d’entourloupes pour s’en exempter.)

Le ministre de la Langue française, Jean-François Roberge, a déposé un projet de loi qui ne contient qu’une clause : celle qui renouvelle la disposition de dérogation/souveraineté parlementaire pour cinq ans. Ne faudrait-il pas, au contraire, refaire le point et franchir des pas de plus  ? C’est en effet graduellement, une ou deux fois par décennie, qu’on a fait avancer ce principe clé depuis 1960. 

D’abord, on a constaté l’an dernier qu’il manquait une disposition à la loi lorsqu’un mouvement pas tout à fait spontané de prières à l’école a poussé le gouvernement à décréter qu’il y avait des temples pour cette activité et que les écoles n’en étaient pas. Même la députée Marwah Rizqy et tout le Parti libéral du Québec ont exprimé leur accord avec cette interdiction. Le Conseil national des musulmans canadiens poursuit l’État québécois à ce sujet et pourrait convaincre le premier juge trudeauiste venu de la qualité de ses arguments. D’où l’intérêt de colmater la brèche, sous le parapluie de disposition de dérogation/souveraineté parlementaire, dans une modification à la loi qu’on pourrait baptiser du nom de Rizqy.

On entend aussi le péquiste Pascal Bérubé et la solidaire Ruba Ghazal pester contre les subventions accordées à des écoles qui imposent à leurs élèves un enseignement religieux. La journaliste radio-canadienne Laurence Niosi a fait le compte l’an dernier : c’est à hauteur de 60 % que sont financées 27 écoles catholiques, 14 juives, 4 musulmanes, 2 protestantes évangéliques, 2 arméniennes et 1 grecque orthodoxe, au coût de 161 millions de dollars. Je verrais d’un bon oeil une modification Bérubé-Ghazal ordonnant une élimination graduelle de ces subventions.

Puis il y a la question des exemptions fiscales accordées aux immeubles religieux. Les fouineuses Sylvie Fournier et Jo-Ann Demers, de l’émission Enquête, ont révélé que l’Église catholique, qui plaide l’indigence en cour pour éviter de dédommager ses nombreuses victimes d’agressions sexuelles, a au moins 1,8 milliard de dollars dans ses coffres. Ces bidous ne sont pas apparus par l’effet de la bonté divine. Pendant des générations, nos aînés versaient régulièrement à l’Église catholique la dîme, une fraction de leurs revenus, en plus de la quête remise chaque dimanche. Ce n’était pas obligatoire, mais Dieu avait bien prévenu que, pour un chrétien, ne pas la payer équivalait à le voler personnellement. 

L’existence de ce pactole rend parfaitement faisable l’abolition des exemptions fiscales pour les biens religieux, qui privaient en 2019  les villes et le Trésor québécois de 180 millions de dollars par an, selon le calcul des collègues Stéphane Baillargeon et Magdaline Boutros. Les fruits de cette fiscalisation devraient être d’abord consacrés à la sauvegarde du patrimoine religieux et à la reconversion des églises, comme l’a récemment suggéré mon estimé collègue chroniqueur de La Presse Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin.

L’étape quinquennale de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État devrait aussi être le moment d’adopter la proposition, faite il y a cinq ans par le PQ, d’étendre l’interdiction des signes religieux à tout le personnel des écoles, y compris celui du service de garde scolaire et de la direction. Puisque le droit acquis s’applique, cet élargissement tombe sous le sens, et il n’aurait pas d’effet notable sur la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre. La vraie étape à franchir à ce chapitre devrait être l’interdiction du port de signes religieux par les fonctionnaires en contact avec la clientèle, avec respect des droits acquis, bien sûr. Pour le reste, on verrait dans cinq ans.

La combinaison de ces avancées aurait un avantage majeur. Par la force des choses, l’ensemble des mesures toucherait bien davantage le catholicisme que les autres confessions. Cela ficherait un pieu dans l’objection centrale des critiques de la loi, qui évoquent avec effroi le spectre de la catho-laïcité. On en aurait fini avec cette calomnie, Dieu merci.

Source: Chronique | Laïcité, deuxième tour

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Investigation: The antisemitism that Oct. 7 unleashed in Canada

2024/02/21 Leave a comment

Good and alarming compendium of antisemitic speech and actions:

….In intelligence briefs released under the Access to Information Act, the Canadian government’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre said violent extremists were spreading antisemitic rhetoric.

Using social media as their “main pathway,” extremist influencers have praised Hamas and disseminated antisemitic content and conspiracy theories that incite violence, according to an Oct. 12, 2023 report.

“The narratives encourage hate crimes, violence and terrorism,” said the report, titled Canada: Trends Influencing Antisemitic Violent Extremism.

A report issued two weeks later predicted the Israel-Hamas conflict would “exacerbate the current steady increase in hate crimes targeting the Jewish community in Canada.”

“Violent rhetoric celebrating the Oct. 7 attack and encouraging like-minded individuals to conduct lone actor attacks could inspire individuals to conduct attacks targeting Israeli interests or the Jewish community,” it said.

The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Karmel said he was glad his grandparents were not around to witness the turn of events in Canada.

“To see this happening again, it’s terrifying,” he said. “It’s hatred.”

…

Kathrada became leader of the Dar al-Ihsan Islamic Centre, run by Muslim Youth of Victoria, in 2018. His weekly videos soon attracted attention.

The Middle East Media Reserarch Institue (MEMRI), a U.S. group that monitors online extremism, began issuing reports on Kathrada that same year.

Since then, MEMRI has issued 60 reports on him, including one that quotes him preaching that non-Muslims are “enemies,” and not to associate with them.

“I want our children to understand this well: the non-Muslims are the enemies of Allah, therefore they are your enemies,” he said in one of the videos.

In another video, he said that “people of faith hate the Yahud because of their disbelief in Allah.” He defined Yahud as “Zionists, Zionist Jews, whatever you like.” Yahud is the Arabic term for Jews.

“If you do not hate the opponents of Allah you have no faith,” he continued. “Having said that, once again, we have not ever called toward violence toward others.”

The government’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre took note of Kathrada in a 2020 report obtained by Global News.

Under the heading “Online proliferation of incitement,” it cited his sermon about the beheading by French extremists of school teacher Samuel Paty, whom he called a “filthy excuse for a human being.”

Slobinsky said religious leaders had an obligation to unite people, rather than to sow division, and that words have consequences.

“Words carry meaning and words can scare people, can affect their sense of safety, their sense of belonging and the sense of mental well-being,” he said.

“The speech that Younus Kathrada uses is highly inflammatory and derogatory towards Jews. Nobody should be, listening to what he says.”

Sent a series of questions, Kathrada did not respond directly, but later wrote on Facebook that he was being harassed by “lazy misfits” who “twist people’s words.”…

Source: Investigation: The antisemitism that Oct. 7 unleashed in Canada

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Vast majority of permanent residents applying to join military haven’t been accepted, figures show

2024/02/20 Leave a comment

CAF has also encountered difficulty in recruiting visible minorities. But security vetting is important and we will see whether the number will move this year (if memory serves me correct, this was first raised by the Conservatives under Kenney, given USA has similar program):

The Canadian Armed Forces has received more than 21,000 applications from permanent residents eager to join the chronically understaffed military full time — but CBC News has learned that less than 100 of them have made it into the regular force in the year since they were allowed to sign up.

In 2022, the federal government lifted a ban on permanent residents enlisting in the military after the country’s top commander warned of a critical shortfall in personnel.

Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said that given the “significant number of demands around the world, there’s just not enough Canadian Forces to do everything.”

Out of 21,472 applications from permanent residents received between Nov 1, 2022 and Nov. 24, 2023 (the first full year of eligibility), less than one per cent were accepted into the regular forces — just 77 people, according to the Department of National Defence.

And of the 6,928 permanent residents who applied to join the navy, army and air force reserves, just 76 were accepted between Nov. 1, 2022 and Jan. 26, 2024, the department told CBC News.

Defence Minister Bill Blair said he’s not satisfied with those numbers.

“I frankly think it’s not good enough and it’s potentially an opportunity lost,” Blair told CBC News.

“I believe that there are very many of those permanent residents in Canada who would make outstanding members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and quite frankly, we need more people in the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Brig.-Gen. Krista Brodie, the commander overseeing military recruitment, said that the “process takes time.”

“Certainly it’s frustrating, and we field those frustrations from candidates and from Canadians and from our own chain of command all the time,” she told CBC News.

Brodie said permanent residents are told when they apply that it can take 18 to 24 months for Canada’s security agencies to handle their files because they can require an “additional level of security screening” due to “foreign implications.”

“At the end of the day, we have to be a combat-capable force ready to fight tonight, and so standards matter,” Brodie said. “And when you’re dealing with sensitive military equipment in a national security environment, those factors are really important.”

Blair said the recruitment process has to move faster.

He said he’s asked his department to look at allowing permanent residents to serve on a probationary basis while they wait for their security checks to be completed.

“I’ve got some experience in this, in hiring in other organizations. You’ve got to go fast, you’ve got to go certainly faster than those numbers demonstrate,” Blair said.

Source: Vast majority of permanent residents applying to join military haven’t been accepted, figures show

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Polgreen:Restoring the Past Won’t Liberate Palestine

2024/02/20 Leave a comment

Noteworthy:

…The agonizing months since Oct. 7 have made it seem all but impossible for any of us to imagine what kind of hopeful future might be invented out of the present nightmare. We have reached a terrifying new stage of the war with the looming assault on Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled Israeli bullets and bombs only to find themselves once again in the cross hairs with nowhere left to run. But generations of Palestinian activists and intellectuals, people who have perhaps the greatest reason to find sustenance in fantasies of a mythic past free of Israel and its people, do not dream of rolling back time.

“Successful liberation movements were successful precisely because they employed creative ideas, original ideas, imaginative ideas, whereas less successful movements (like ours, alas) had a pronounced tendency to formulas and an uninspired repetition of past slogans and past patterns of behavior,” wrote the Palestinian American scholar Edward Said. “The future, like the past, is built by human beings. They, and not some distant mediator or savior, provide the agency for change.”

Said was perhaps the most influential intellectual heir to Fanon, and in a tragic twist, he too died of leukemia, the same cancer that killed Fanon at the age of 36. Both of them died without seeing their lifelong struggles won. But both went to their graves as modern, cosmopolitan men, engaged with the world not as they wished it was but as they found it, chronicled it and shaped it toward their unshakable vision of self-determination and freedom for the colonized peoples of the world. Liberation requires invention, not restoration. If history tells us anything it is this: Time moves in one direction, forward.

Source: Restoring the Past Won’t Liberate Palestine

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How NIMBYs are helping to turn the public against immigrants

2024/02/20 Leave a comment

Overly simplistic as factors influencing housing prices not merely NIMBY-driven. But useful comparison between Canadian and American situations:

…The problem arises when governments effectively prohibit the supply of housing from rising in line with demand. Between 2012 and 2022, Americans formed 15.6 million new households but built only 11.9 million new housing units. As a result, even before the post-lockdown surge in migration, there were more aspiring households than homes in America’s thriving metro areas.

This was largely a consequence of zoning restrictions. Municipal governments have collectively made it illegal to erect an apartment building on about 75 percent of our country’s residential land. In large swaths of the country, there are households eager to rent or buy a modest apartment, and developers eager to provide them, but zoning restrictions have blocked such transactions from taking place.

This creates a housing shortage. You can house 32 families much more quickly and cheaply by building a single apartment building than by erecting 32 separate houses. To require all of your community’s housing units to be single-family homes isn’t all that different from prohibiting the manufacture of all non-luxury cars. In both cases, you end up with artificial scarcity and unaffordability.

If private builders were allowed to respond to rising demand — while the government ensured the provision of housing to those unable to pay market rents — we could have large increases in immigration without any uptick in housing insecurity. In our current reality, the rise in asylum seekers has coincided with a record spike in homelessness and persistently high housing costs. 

It is hard enough to sustain popular support for large-scale immigration when there aren’t major economic downsides to that policy. Add legitimate concerns about housing costs to perennial anxieties over cultural change, and it becomes difficult for even the most pro-immigration societies to avoid a nativist backlash. Or at least, this is what recent events in Canada suggest.

Why Canada is getting colder on immigration

Canada has long been considered an exceptionally pro-immigrant country. Yet it has struggled to sustain popular support for liberal immigration policies amid its deepening housing shortage. Canada’s experience therefore serves as a cautionary tale for American progressives: If we allow municipalities to suppress housing construction, then ridding our nation’s mainstream politics of Trumpian xenophobia and electing a vigorously pro-immigrant administration will not be enough to avert popular demands for restricting immigration. 

Until recently, Canada’s immigration politics were the envy of US cosmopolitans. In 2016, while many other nations were trying to repel Syrian refugees, the Canadian government couldn’t find enough displaced families to meet the public’s demand for sponsoring them. Since 2019, the country has welcomed more refugees than any other nation, and done so with minimal public outcry. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to capitalize on his country’s multicultural openness by putting immigration expansion at the center of his vision of economic growth. Canada welcomed 471,550 new permanent residents in 2023, up from 300,000 in 2015.

And that figure does not include foreign students, temporary workers, and refugees, who together constitute an even larger group of new arrivals. In 2025 and 2026, the government aims to admit 500,000 new permanent residents each year.

But in recent months, the political sustainability of Trudeau’s plan has come into question, in no small part because immigration’s impact on housing costs has come under scrutiny. 

Rents have soared across Canada in recent years. From 1990 to 2022, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the country increased at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent. In 2023, it rose by 8 percent. The government estimates that it will need to add 3.5 million extra housing units by 2030 to make shelter affordable. But a recent report from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce suggests that this underestimates the housing shortage by 1.5 million units, a shortfall driven by an undercount of nonpermanent immigrants, who have been entering the country in massive numbers.

Trudeau has sought to promote housing construction in various ways. But his administration’s efforts have yet to offset the impact of years of highly restrictive zoning in many of Canada’s largest population centers.

As Canadians bid against each other for an inadequate supply of housing units, they’ve soured on immigration. 

In a 2022 poll from the Environics Institute for Survey Research, Canadians disagreed with the statement that there was too much immigration in their country by a margin of 42 points. One year later, that margin had shrunk to 7 points, the largest single-year shift in the survey’s history. Among Canadians who said immigration levels were too high, the most commonly cited reason by far was that immigrants drive up housing prices. 

In response to these changing political winds, the Trudeau government has sought to restrict admissions of international students while imploring universities to provide dedicated housing for their enrollees. But this minor concession to the nation’s restrictionist mood appears insufficient. The prime minister’s approval rating has sunk in recent months, with 64 percent of Canadians now disapproving of his performance. Meanwhile, Canada’s Conservative Party has ridden the housing and immigration issues to a strong advantage over Trudeau’s Liberals in the polls. 

Abundance is possible, but scarcity seems popular 

There are many parallels between the politics of immigration reform and those of housing policy. In both cases, countries have the power to swiftly increase their collective prosperity by tolerating some short-term disruptions. When cities let developers build more housing, they not only reduce rent inflation but also increase their tax bases, which makes it easier to fund robust social services. When rich nations let prime-age immigrants settle within their borders, they increase their productive capacity, which makes it more affordable to support retirees. 

And yet, in both of these policy areas, we routinely opt to make ourselves poorer for the sake of avoiding change. 

America does not need to choose between expanding immigration and reducing housing costs. But there is a risk that we’ll choose to do neither.

Source: How NIMBYs are helping to turn the public against immigrants

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Keller: Justin Trudeau has the power to fix one of his biggest political problems. Joe Biden isn’t so lucky

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Not as easy as portrayed but definitely compared to the USA:

….Mr. Biden and Democrats want to address this. This year, after Senate Democrats gave in to long-standing Republican demands and agreed to a tough border bill, the President said he would gladly sign it the minute it hit his desk.

Former president Donald Trump responded by ordering Republicans to kill the bill. He wants disorder at the border.

And Canada?

Our immigration surge – a mix of low-wage temporary foreign workers, schools peddling visas to aspiring low-wage workers, and refugee claimants arriving as alleged tourists from countries such as Mexico – is having effects similar to those in the U.S. Similar, but bigger.

On the one hand, GDP is higher than it would have been. But GDP per person has been shrinking since 2022. A country with a history of lagging productivity is lagging more than ever. Each piece of pie is getting smaller.

And population growth has been so large and fast that rental housing vacancies are at a record low, and heading lower. Rents are very high relative to wages, and unlikely to moderate any time soon. Ditto housing prices. Voters have noticed.

Mr. Biden can’t fix his immigration problem because Mr. Trump’s congressional minions won’t let him.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in contrast, has all the tools to rewrite the story he authored.

Most of what needs doing – downsizing but up-skilling the student visa program; eliminating temporary foreign work visas outside of agriculture and high-wage jobs; reimposing visa requirements on countries such as Mexico; returning permanent immigration to a focus on skilled immigrants – is up to the executive in the Canadian system.

If he wants to, the PM can make like Nike, and Just Do It.

Source: Justin Trudeau has the power to fix one of his biggest political problems. Joe Biden isn’t so lucky

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Horn: The Return of the Big Lie: Antisemitism is winning

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Long read with concluding thoughts applicable to all groups on what universities and other institutions need to do:

It is fairly obvious what Harvard and other universities would need to do to turn this tide. None of it involves banning slogans or curtailing free speech. Instead it involves things like enforcing existing codes of conduct regarding harassment; protecting classroom buildings, libraries, and dining halls as zones free from advocacy campaigns (similar to rules for polling places); tracking and rejecting funding from entities supporting federally designated terror groups (a topic raised in recent congressional testimony regarding numerous American universities); gut-renovating diversity bureaucracies to address their obvious failure to tackle anti-Semitism; investigating and exposing the academic limitations of courses and programs premised on anti-Semitic lies; and expanding opportunities for students to understand Israeli and Jewish history and to engage with ideas and with one another. There are many ways to advocate for Israeli and Palestinian coexistence that honor the dignity and legitimacy of both indigenous groups and the need to build a shared future. The restoration of such a model of civil discourse, which has been decimated by heckling and harassment, would be a boon to all of higher education.

Harvard has already begun signaling change in this direction: The university recently reiterated and clarified rules regarding the time, place, and manner of student protests. For Harvard to take more of these steps would be huge, but I have struggled to understand why all of them still feel so small. Perhaps it’s because the problem is a multi-thousand-year fatal flaw in the ways our societies conceive of good and evil—and also because somewhere deep within me, I know what has been lost. There was a time, not so very long ago, when we didn’t have to prove our right to exist.

Among the mountains of evidence that Jewish students sent me, one image has stayed in my mind. There are videos of crowds chanting “Long live the intifada!” inside Harvard’s Science Center, and “There is only one solution: intifada revolution!” in Harvard Yard, along with other places equally familiar from my student days. But I keep coming back to the crowds marching and screaming in front of Harvard Law School’s Langdell library, because Langdell is a sacred place for me. On my 22nd birthday, in 1999, when I was a senior at Harvard, a law student I’d met at Hillel took me up through Langdell’s maintenance passageways to the library’s rooftop, where he asked me to marry him. I said yes.

I watched the video of the students marching and screaming in front of Langdell, and in an instant I remembered everything: studying in campus libraries for my Hebrew- and Yiddish-literature courses, talking for hours with Muslim and Christian and progressive and conservative classmates, inviting friends of all backgrounds to join me at Hillel, scrupulously following the Jewish tradition of “argument for the sake of heaven” in even the most heated debates, gathering for Shabbat dinners crowded with hundreds of students—and over those long and beautiful dinners, falling in love. My classmates and I often disagreed about the most important things. But no one screamed in our faces when we wore Hebrew T-shirts on campus. No one shunned us when we talked about our friends and family in Israel, or spat on us on our way to class. No crowds gathered to chant for our deaths. No one told us that there should be no more Jews. That night, my future husband and I worried only about getting in trouble for sneaking up to the library roof.

Source: THE RETURN OF THE BIG LIE: ANTI-SEMITISM IS WINNING

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Barclay: Systemic change needed to recognize harms of antisemitism in the public service

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Yet another pressure (and DEI in general has discounted Jews and antisemitism). That being said, recognizing Jews as a separate category would also require recognizing other religions, further muddying the waters between gender, racialized minorities and religious minorities, making intersectionality analysis likely beyond the capacity of the public service.

Analysis would be stronger if there was some data presented in terms of discrimination and harassment reported cases (sorry, “reported” without references or actual data doesn’t cut it):

In 2022, the Jewish Public Service Network (JPSN) petitioned the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force to designate Jewish public servants as an “employment equity ginvroup” in response to the blatant antisemitism, anti-Jewish hatred, and oppression that have become endemic within Canada’s public service.

However, only months before Hamas’ savage attacks against the state of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force rejected the JPSN’s request and stated that, despite the rampant antisemitism that Jewish public servants have been forced to endure, the Task Force does not “recommend the creation of a separate category for some or all religious minorities at this time.”

Unfortunately, although the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force has refused to designate Jewish public servants as an “employment equity group,” it is readily apparent that Jewish people throughout Canada’s public service are consistently the victims of overt antisemitism, explicit oppression, and anti-Jewish hatred.

For example, data shows that antisemitic incidents have become increasingly frequent and are consistently permitted to transpire throughout Canada’s public service, particularly in the wake of Hamas’ recent attacks against the state of Israel. Even the Task Force itself was forced to acknowledge in its final report that it was “especially concerned by the reported rise in anti-Semitism [in Canadian society and Canada’s public service].” In fact, whenever the Israel-Palestine conflict erupts, antisemitic incidents and violent antisemitism inevitablyskyrocket.

In addition, antisemitic canards about Jews and money are routinely invoked, and countless macabre antisemitic delusions about the Jewish community have been allowed to migrate freely throughout Canada’s public service. For instance, when one Jewish public servant dared to eat matzah at work, she was immediately beset by a colleague who asked, “How could you eat that given it is made from the blood of Egyptian children?”

Sadly, it is clear that the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force has struggled profoundly to accurately locate the Jewish experience within the public service, and has completely failed to earnestly interface with the intersectionality that is inherent to every Jewish identity, ideology, and experience.

For example, the word “antisemitism” only appears twice throughout the Task Force’s entire final report. Furthermore, the words “Jew,” “Jewish,” and “antisemitism” do not appear at all within the report’s executive summary. In contrast, the Black community and the 2SLGBTQI+ community are referred to more than 300 times and 175 times, respectively.

In addition, the Task Force has remained particularly unable to reconcile the fact that it is impossible to classify the Jewish identity as merely “race” or “religion.” As the JPSN itself was forced to reiterate: “Jews are often described as a ‘religious minority’… [However,] the Jewish people are an ethno-religion. Both the ethno and the ‘religion’ are important.”

Unfortunately, the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force’s utter inability to earnestly interface with the challenges that are innate to Jewish identity and to empathize with the plight of Jewish people is not a unique phenomenon.

Rather, Canadian society and the international community have long remained doggedly committed to the myth that the Jewish community is a rich, white, homogenous mass.

Moreover, throughout the advent and onset of “identity politics,” the Jewish nation’s alleged “whiteness” and purported ideological uniformity have consistently been used as the impetus for countless antisemitic tropes, as well as blatant antisemitic abuse and violence.

In fact, countless political actors and organizations deny the plight of Jewish people around the world and dismiss the constant surge of anti-Jewish violence and antisemitism throughout the international political system, simply because the Jewish community does not satisfy the requisite “diversity criteria.”

Therefore, although Jewish identity is certainly the product of centuries of vigorous tradition and customs, it has become essential for all Jewish people and every Jewish ally to expose and embrace anew the vibrant diversity that is inherent to the Jewish community and its fundamental ethos.

Canadian society and the myriad structures that comprise its political apparatus, such as the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, must first accept the premise that every Jew is an individual and that Jews are real people, replete with problems, social needs, and ills aplenty, before any Jew will truly be treated as a human being in Canada.

William Barclay is a political theorist and consultant who has collaborated with political actors and organizations throughout North America and Europe in order to inform policy and help successfully resolve various unique political challenges.

Source: Systemic change needed to recognize harms of antisemitism in the public service

Filed under Antisemitism, Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Lisée | Le remède imaginaire [immigration]

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Blast from the past, still relevant, perhaps even more so, along with commentary on the French language commissioner’s comments on how francisation will never match demand, particularly given the large number of temporary workers and students (the latter likely to decline sharply given tougher French language requirements:

Il a fait son apparition dans le débat public en 2011, cosignant un ouvrage choquant. Le malotru utilisait des chiffres probants pour crever un dogme. Le livre s’intitulait Le remède imaginaire (Boréal). Le dogme qu’il trucidait était celui de l’immigration comme solution à la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre et au vieillissement de la population et comme levier pour l’enrichissement. Les études existantes, osait-il affirmer contre l’avis unanime des gouvernements, du patronat et d’associations de gauche, démontrent que ce n’est tout simplement pas le cas. L’immigration peut avoir d’autres vertus, mais pas celles-là.

Treize ans plus tard, les constats des auteurs Benoît Dubreuil et Guillaume Marois ont fini par percoler dans le débat public, même si les zones de résistance perdurent. L’économiste Pierre Fortin a mis à jour le consensus scientifique dans ses propres publications, y compris dans un rapport de 2022 pour le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ). Il vient d’ailleurs de surenchérir. Analysant les dernières données disponibles des pays du G9 et de quatre provinces canadiennes, il conclut dans cette étude que « l’immigration contribue surtout à modifier la répartition de la pénurie entre secteurs de l’économie, mais qu’elle ne produit pas de réduction globale significative de la rareté de la main-d’oeuvre. Dans les cas étudiés, elle paraît au contraire l’avoir aggravée ». Ouch !

Benoît Dubreuil est un récidiviste. Désormais commissaire québécois à la langue française, il a utilisé le même outil — sa maîtrise des chiffres — pour dégonfler une autre baudruche : l’efficacité de la francisation pour renverser le déclin du français. « On a accumulé un passif, a-t-il expliqué, dans le sens où les gens qui sont arrivés au cours des dernières années, même si on voulait avoir des classes de francisation pour tout le monde, on n’y arriverait pas. Et même si on avait des classes de francisation, il faudrait avoir des incitatifs financiers beaucoup plus forts pour amener les gens à s’inscrire et pour amener les gens à y mettre un nombre d’heures conséquent. » 

On a beau doubler, tripler, quintupler les budgets de francisation, la cible est simplement inatteignable. C’est comme vouloir mettre le lac Saint-Jean en bouteille. On peut, comme le fait la ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, Christine Fréchette, proclamer qu’on fait des progrès considérables, le niveau du lac ne bouge pas, et les rivières continuent de s’y déverser.

« Une majorité d’immigrants temporaires [ne parlant pas français] ne s’inscrivent pas aux cours de Francisation Québec, et ceux qui y obtiennent une place n’y consacrent pas suffisamment de temps pour dépasser le niveau débutant », dit Dubreuil. Le gouvernement de la CAQ a l’impression d’avoir frappé deux grands coups en exigeant l’obtention d’un niveau 4 (sur 12) pour renouveler les permis de travail après trois ans et d’un niveau 5 pour les étudiants en fin de premier cycle de McGill et de Concordia venant de l’extérieur du Québec.

« Moi, a dit Dubreuil devant les journalistes mercredi, un diplômé qui a un niveau 5, je ne l’embauche pas, OK ? Puis, je connais quand même pas mal l’apprentissage des langues, là. On ne peut pas prendre la personne puis la mettre dans une réunion de travail, on ne peut pas la mettre ici dans la salle puis penser que la personne va comprendre ce qui se passe. » On ne peut pas non plus l’inviter à souper. Le niveau 8, pour lui, devrait être visé « de façon générale pour assurer une intégration sociale ».

On est loin du compte, car l’afflux de travailleurs temporaires, calcule-t-il, a un impact majeur sur l’augmentation de l’utilisation de l’anglais au travail. Entre 2011 et 2023, le nombre de salariés utilisant principalement l’anglais a bondi de 40 %. C’est sans précédent, explique-t-il (mais il semble oublier la Conquête, puis l’afflux de loyalistes fuyant la révolution américaine). Reste que son évaluation est en deçà de la réalité, car il n’a pas les données pour les arrivées de 2024. Et c’est évidemment concentré à Montréal, où le gain anglophone est le plus fort et crée une spirale de l’anglicisation de l’immigration.

« La plupart des gens qui ne parlent pas français au Québec sont en immersion anglaise. Donc, si vous arrivez, vous connaissez bien l’anglais, vous êtes en immersion anglaise à temps plein et vous faites du français trois, quatre, cinq heures par semaine. Si je reviens vous voir un an, deux ans, trois ans plus tard, quelle va être votre langue forte ? Celle que vous allez privilégier dans un environnement comme celui de Montréal où, dans les faits, il n’y a pas beaucoup de contraintes à l’utilisation d’une langue plutôt que l’autre ? » La langue de Shakespeare, évidemment. 

C’est donc, je le suppose, pour sortir les décideurs de leur torpeur qu’il a évalué la somme que tous les intervenants — gouvernement, entreprises, immigrants — devraient investir pour franciser correctement les immigrants temporaires arrivés avant la fin de 2023 : près de 13 milliards de dollars. Or, cette somme n’inclut ni le coût de francisation des résidents permanents qui ne parlent pas le français, ni celui des 32 % d’Anglo-Québécois qui ne le parlent toujours pas près d’un demi-siècle après l’adoption de la loi 101, ni celui des 25 % d’allophones qui ne le parlent pas non plus, ni même celui des immigrants temporaires arrivés après le 31 décembre 2023.

On peut certes mieux franciser des immigrants qui ont fait l’effort, avant de venir ici, d’acquérir des bases. Mais sinon, la francisation comme solution au déclin linguistique est un mirage. Une inaccessible étoile. Un fantasme dont la réitération rituelle par le patronat, ainsi que par les élus libéraux et solidaires, fait écran au réel et laisse place à la dégradation de la situation.

Je ne doute pas un instant de la volonté de François Legault et de plusieurs membres de son équipe de laisser en héritage la fin du déclin. Et il est indubitable que plusieurs des mesures annoncées depuis six ans sont courageuses, inédites et structurantes. J’ai bon espoir que le plan que déposera bientôt le ministre de la Langue française, Jean-François Roberge, inclura des éléments positifs.

Mais c’est le drame de ce gouvernement d’avoir simultanément présidé, d’abord par inconscience — il n’a pas vu venir la hausse des immigrants temporaires —, ensuite par laxisme — il fut informé de la perte de contrôle dès 2021 —, à ce grand phénomène d’anglicisation de l’ère moderne. Réagissant jeudi au dépôt du rapport, la ministre Fréchette a invité Ottawa à « sortir de sa bulle » en ce qui concerne l’inégale répartition géographique des demandeurs d’asile. Bien. Mais au sujet de l’impact anglicisant des immigrants temporaires, elle semblait confortablement campée dans la sienne.

Source: Chronique | Le remède imaginaire

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with , , ,

Douglas Todd: Record population growth ‘massive problem’ for housing in B.C

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

No real surprise but nevertheless of note:

The statisticians describe the unprecedented number of people streaming into B.C., while the province’s mayors explain how difficult and costly it is to try to house everyone.

A special housing meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities heard this week that B.C.’s population has jumped like never before — and that more than 600,000 new dwellings are needed just to get back to supply and demand ratios similar to a couple of decades ago.

“All of our growth is international,” said Brett Wilmer, B.C.’s director of statistics. B.C.’s population would basically remain flat, Wilmer said, if it weren’t for the dramatic hikes it has experienced in permanent residents, and especially of foreign students and guest workers.

More than 80 per cent of B.C. newcomers are moving to Metro Vancouver, Victoria, the Fraser Valley and the Central Okanagan, said Wilmer.

While B.C.’s population expanded by a near-record three per cent last year, an economist for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Braden Batch, said new housing supply is not matching outsized demand.

“Population growth has put real strain on the housing system. It’s a massive problem,” said Batch, adding new dwellings would have to be built 2.5 times faster to keep up.

The hundreds of mayors, councillors and urban planners attending the UBCM housing summit were told that B.C.’s population will grow by almost one million in the next eight years.

Batch’s charts showed that, under current scenarios, B.C. is set to have a housing shortfall of 610,000 units by 2030.

That prompted the director of Simon Fraser University’s Cities Program, Andy Yan, to say: “We’re going out to offer the Canadian dream to people around the world, but we seem to be OK throwing them into a housing nightmare.”

B.C.’s mayors described how hard it is to get developers to build affordable new housing. They also warned it is costly for taxpayers to provide the transit, sewer systems, schools and medical care to support prodigious population growth.

During a panel titled “Housing the Next Million British Columbians,” five mayors from across the province expressed decidedly mixed feelings about the way B.C. Premier David Eby and Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon last year pushed through sweeping legislation to respond to dramatic urban population growth.

While some mayors complained they weren’t consulted, the B.C. government is now requiring municipalities to allow between three and six units per lot in virtually all low-density residential neighbourhoods, plus highrises near the transit hubs of 31 towns and cities.

Despite some mayors expressing cautious support for Victoria’s plan, they nevertheless said they didn’t think it would improve affordability.

Instead, the mayors described the high cost of supporting more people in more congested neighbourhoods, and expressed dissatisfaction about overstretched staff, loss of green space, parking debacles and a dire shortage of construction workers.

Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley said it will cost taxpayers an average of $1 million to upgrade a typical 100-metre row of detached houses to provide the infrastructure for four- and six-plexes.

“I’m also not sure we have the workforce, the tradespeople, to do it,” said Hurley, remarking that “hopefully half of the those million more people who are arriving will be in the housing construction industry.”

Both Hurley and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said the NDP’s push for multi-unit housing throughout cities is creating chaos for their long-range community plans, which have emphasized high density around SkyTrain lines and certain town centres.

“The densification we’ve done is really stark,” said Hurley, referring to massive new skyscraper clusters Burnaby has encouraged at Metrotown, Brentwood and Lougheed town centres.

Citing Richmond’s much-praised Steveston, a community with detached homes on small lots on the south arm of the Fraser River, Brodie argued the B.C. government’s mass upzoning scheme “will destroy a fine neighbourhood.”

None of the five mayors on the “Housing the Next Million British Columbians” panel believed that efforts to increase housing supply will actually lead to affordable dwellings for middle-class and other families.

In recent years, Brodie said, Richmond “has built 50 per cent more housing units than the population has grown. But prices have still gone up by 60 per cent. It simply does not follow that supply reduces prices.”

Bluntly, the mayor of Burnaby added: “The idea that supply will lead to affordability is an absolute fallacy.”

Although speakers agreed projections about the future are hard to get right, Hurley suggested it’s possible development could slow down.

That echoed Wilmer, who told delegates the huge spike in foreign students and guest workers approved by Ottawa in the past two years should “drop back to historical levels this year and next.”

Such non-permanent residents put the most pressure on rental costs, which are at record highs in Metro Vancouver.

While Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto talked about how accommodating vigorous population growth means her city “can only go up, up, and only go in-fill,” Janice Morrison, the mayor of 11,000-resident Nelson, lamented the inevitable “loss of urban green spaces, which is a big reason a lot of people move to smaller cities.”

Richmond’s mayor disagreed over parking with Nathan Pachal, the mayor of the City of Langley. Saying it costs $90,000 to create one parking space, Pachal supported the NDP’s plan to drastically reduce off-street parking for new multi-unit housing buildings. But Brodie said it will create a parking nightmare.

Meanwhile, Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog was among those expressing guarded support for the provincial government’s aggressive “good intention” to provide shelter to more people through blanket upzoning.

Like some others, however, Krog suggested the strongest hope for creating more units, especially of the affordable kind, lies in government-subsidized housing — especially from the national government, which he said got out of housing incentives 30 years ago.

All in all, the mayors called firmly on the federal Liberals to show more common sense. That means, they said, Ottawa must be more pragmatic in aligning its international migration targets with the ability to provide housing for all.

Source: Douglas Todd: Record population growth ‘massive problem’ for housing in B.C

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

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