Conford: Israelis and Palestinians are both trapped by the dangerous fantasies of history

2024/01/08 Leave a comment

One of the best commentaries I have seen, thoughtful and balanced:

… For years, the right-wing in Israel – and Hamas in their way – have promulgated the notion that the peace process was an illusion, a mirage. But what events have shown is that the delusion, the Fata Morgana, was that there could ever be normality without finding a peaceful, negotiated settlement to the issue. Polls back in 1993 – before a cruel wave of Hamas suicide bombings and the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin undermined belief in the possibility – had support for a peace treaty among both Palestinians and Israelis running above 65 per cent.

Since then, the far right in Israel and Hamas have shared the same goal: to put a halt to any possibility of the peaceful division of the land into mutually recognized stable states of Israel and Palestine. Even in the past few weeks, Mr. Netanyahu has boasted how he has stopped a Palestinian state from coming into existence in the past and how he will also in the future, arguing that the Hamas attack shows why he is right to do so.

It is exactly this thinking which has brought us to where we are now.

The sole way to escape the cycle of violence is to clearheadedly renounce all the maximalist and eliminationist fantasies and the dehumanizing caricatures that have led, and will continue to lead, to the horrifying shedding of the blood of thousands of men, women and children….

M.G. Conford is the writer and director of the documentaries Through The Eyes Of Enemies, Not On Any Map, and Fragments of Jerusalem. He is an associate professor of film at Toronto Metropolitan University

Source: Israelis and Palestinians are both trapped by the dangerous fantasies of history

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Ukraine-Russia war: Putin #citizenship decree violates children’s rights, Ukraine says – BBC

2024/01/08 Leave a comment

Of note and yes it does:

Ukraine has condemned a decree signed by President Putin making it possible to confer Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children moved to Russia.

Last March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Putin over Russia’s policy of forced child deportations.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry called the decree illegal.

However, Russia insists it is moving the children out of harm’s way.

On 4 January Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a citizenship decree expediting Russian citizenship to foreigners and stateless people.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry singled out the passage saying that orphaned Ukrainian children or those deprived of parental guardianship can be fast-tracked to Russian citizenship by way of a presidential decision, or after a request by the institution holding them.

The decree states that a citizenship application for such a child can be submitted by their legal guardian or the head of a Russian organisation responsible for the child.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry sees this as Russia’s attempt to solve its own demographic crisis, describing it as a violation of Ukrainian and international laws and children’s rights.

The decree is yet more evidence of Russia’s policy of forced assimilation of Ukrainian children, and crimes against Ukraine in general, the ministry added.

Ukraine’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, says Moscow is granting citizenship to the children so that they are not regarded as Ukrainians who have been transferred to Russia.

The Ukrainian authorities have identified over 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been deported to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Only 387 children have been brought back so far, according to the Ukrainian national database Children of war.

In November 2023, the BBC’s Panorama TV programme revealed that a political ally of Mr Putin adopted a child seized from a Ukrainian children’s home.

Sergey Mironov, the 70-year-old leader of a Russian political party, is named on the adoption record of a two-year-old girl who was taken in 2022 by a woman he is now married to, according to documents seen by Panorama.

In March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC said he was responsible for for unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, was hit with the same charges. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said children could not be “treated as spoils of war” and that it was possible Putin could stand trial.

Source: Ukraine-Russia war: Putin citizenship decree violates children’s rights, Ukraine says – BBC

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House: How Mass Immigration Hurts Black Americans – The Daily Beast

2024/01/08 Leave a comment

Have seen some other similar commentary from Black Americans as well as tension between Black immigrants and African Americans:

…First, the CBC [Congressional Black Congress] should push for inclusive standards for Black labor in skilled industries that attract disproportionate concentrations of immigrant workers. It might propose language that mirrors President Biden’s March 2022 executive order 14005 stating that the “Future is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers.”

The CBC might offer similar language in the upcoming debates on immigration legislation—specifically, to prioritize the hiring and training of underrepresented American workers in civil construction. It would reinforce the equity provisions established by Congress in the infrastructure and clean energy laws.

The construction and manufacturing industries will receive a jump-start from the $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and complementary investments from private companies. It will pay to reconstruct highways, bridges and tunnels, weatherize public buildings, install electric charging stations, construct electric battery plants and electric vehicle factories, and develop wind and solar power plants.

The projects will require the hiring and training of thousands of skilled workers, many without college degrees. Yet, Black labor historically has been excluded in civil construction. Today, as a consequence, the racial demographic in the construction industry is 60 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Black American, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition, sanctuary cities like New York are receiving large allocations of federal infrastructure funds. The city’s construction industry employed 374,000 people in 2020—and 53 percent were immigrants. By contrast, the unemployment rate of Black male workers was higher than any other ethnic group.

Second, the CBC should propose that sanctuary cities seeking bailouts from Washington be required to give the local population first dibs on facilities and services. The failure of authorities in such cities to prioritize their native underserved populations creates a dynamic of “taking from Peter to feed Paul” that is abhorrent.

Congress should require sanctuary cities to prioritize the local population for provisions such as homeless shelters, affordable housing units, emergency room and mental health services, education outreach, legal services, and food programs, among others. The populations from the border should have access to older facilities, if room is available.

Third, the CBC should call on the Biden administration to raise seed money for a reparations fund with the same urgency it has done for immigrants. Harris is campaigning on her success in raising $4 billion to help migrating immigrants in Central America. Why not utilize her fundraising prowess towards a development bank for the descendants of slavery and Jim Crow?

Finally, the CBC should demand that immigrants be required to learn about America’s struggle against racism and colorism. The colorism system of subtle discrimination based on fair complexions can be deeply rooted in the culture and practices of people from countries with colonial pasts. Black Americans should not be expected to endure the petty slights of color hierarchy with every new surge of immigration.

In closing, the CBC has an urgent responsibility to defend the needs of Black labor in the pending debates on border security and immigration reform. It would seem to be in the interest of both parties to hear them out.

Roger House is an associate professor of American studies at Emerson College in Boston. His commentary on Black politics and cultural history have been published in leading venues. He is the author of Blue Smoke: The Recorded Journey of Big Bill Broonzy and South End Shout: Boston’s Forgotten Music Scene in the Jazz Age…

Source: How Mass Immigration Hurts Black Americans – The Daily Beast

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Canada’s Foreign Student Surge Prompts Changes, and Anxiety

2024/01/08 Leave a comment

Makes The New York Times but broader range of expert views missing:

The education consultant in India didn’t reveal to Maninderjit Kaur, a Canada-bound student, where exactly, relative to Toronto, the college she had enrolled in was.

Ms. Kaur told my colleague, Norimitsu Onishi, that after a never-ending Uber ride — eight hours and 800 Canadian dollars later — she had ended up in Timmins, Ontario, a place she had never heard of.

But, as Nori reported, finishing a degree in this remote city was perhaps less of an isolating experience given that 82 percent of students at Northern College in Timmins are foreign nationals, mostly from India.

Recruiting foreign students who pay higher tuition fees — roughly five times as much as Canadians to obtain an undergraduate degree, according to the census agency — has always been attractive to the country’s institutions. It has also become increasingly important for the federal government, which is vying to hit a lofty goal of attracting 1.45 million immigrants between 2023 and 2025.

By announcing this record-breaking target in November 2022, as part of a strategy to plug national labor shortages, Canada signaled that it was headed in the opposite direction from many Western governments that are curtailing migration, as I reported at the time. (As of this week, most foreign students in Britain will no longer be allowed to bring their families, a move that the country’s Home Office said delivered on its commitment to “a decisive cut in migration.”)

In Canada, the surge of overseas students has fanned concerns about the readiness of university and college communities to adequately host them, and about efforts to ensure that their labor and their finances are not exploited. The immigration minister, Marc Miller, recently announced a handful of measures taking effect this month for foreign students.

For the first time since the early 2000s, the government has increased the savings threshold that foreign students must have to qualify for a study permit to about 20,600 Canadian dollars, up from 10,000 dollars. And it will continue, until at least April, to allow international students to work more than 20 hours per week, a policy it had previously walked back.

Without providing details, Mr. Miller’s ministry said it was also looking into ways that it could ensure colleges and universities, which are provincially regulated, accept only as many students as they can assist in finding housing.

“Ahead of September 2024, we are prepared to take necessary measures, including significantly limiting visas, to ensure that designated learning institutions provide adequate and sufficient student supports,” Mr. Miller said last month at a news conference in which he announced the changes. He accused some institutions of operating the “diploma equivalent of puppy mills,” depriving those foreign students of a positive academic experience in the face of outsize hardships and a lack of intervention by provincial governments.Continue reading the main story

“Enough is enough,” Mr. Miller added. “If provinces and territories cannot do this, we will do it for them, and they will not like the bluntness of the instruments that we use.”

The number of international students in Canada has skyrocketed over the last three years, with a 60 percent increase in the number of study permits processed by the immigration ministry. It completed more than one million new study permit applications and extensions in 2023, a record, up from 838,000 in 2022 and 560,000 in 2021.

Study permits aren’t strictly capped, but permanent residencies do adhere to annual quotas. In 2022, Canada welcomed about 432,000 permanent residents, and of those, 95,000 were previously international students, according to a September 2023 report by four Canadian senators urging the government to address “program integrity issues.” Those include an increasing perception that aiming for a Canadian degree is a sure pathway to citizenship.

“It’s not a pathway — it’s a minefield,” said Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a migrant-led organization, similar to a union, based in Toronto.

He characterized the changes as minor “tweaks” to a system that was probably due for an overhaul.

“We’re constantly hearing issues around high tuition fees, difficulty being able to get permanent resident status, exploitation of work and exploitation by landlords,” Mr. Hussan said.Continue reading the main story

Placing firm caps on student permits is not the answer, said Anna Triandafyllidou, a migration researcher and professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, but she added that the government should do a better job of regulating migrant flow to avoid stoking “cutthroat” competition to stay in Canada.

“Otherwise you create this huge bottleneck where you admit 600,000 international students, but these have to compete with everyone else for 450,000 permanent residence permits,” she said.

It is becoming more common for migrants to spend some time living in the country before becoming permanent residents, a process known as two-step immigration, which is seen almost as a taboo in Canada, Professor Triandafyllidou told me.

Canada should recognize it has “a two-step system and just make sure that it works properly,” she said.

Source: Canada’s Foreign Student Surge Prompts Changes, and Anxiety

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Russian antiwar activist could lose Canadian citizenship bid over conviction abroad – CBC.ca

2024/01/06 Leave a comment

Appears to be a case of operational staff ignoring or not considering the context and expect that CBC coverage will provoke a needed rethink. Makes no sense and would be curious to know whether this is an isolated instance or being applied more broadly to similar cases.

From a process point of view, Kartasheva flagged this conviction in writing as part of her application and thus no misrepresentation. Why IRCC missed this, only to notice at the ceremony, reflects sloppiness at best. Should have been addressed before rather than this humiliating treatment of Kartasheva and, more broadly, of IRCC’s processing:

A critic of the Kremlin could be barred from obtaining Canadian citizenship because she has to prove to immigration officials here that it isn’t a crime in Canada to criticize the Russian army.

Maria Kartasheva, who has lived in Ottawa since 2019, has been convicted under a Russian law passed shortly after the invasion of Ukraine which bars “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

Kartasheva says she was surprised Russian prosecutors pursued her over two blog posts she wrote while living in Ontario.

But what was most jawdropping for the 30-year-old was when a Canadian officiant motioned for her to step aside in the middle of her citizenship ceremony last spring, just moments before she was supposed to swear her allegiance to the Crown.

“I felt betrayed because I was hoping I was safe here in Canada,” said Kartasheva, who’s a tech worker in the national capital.

Under Canadian immigration rules, if an applicant is charged with a crime in another country that could be indictable under Canada’s Criminal Code, their application can be revoked or refused. …

Source: Russian antiwar activist could lose Canadian citizenship bid over conviction abroad – CBC.ca

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Globe editorial: When protests become acts of intimidation

2024/01/06 Leave a comment

Well said:

This cannot stand. Supporters of the Palestinian people have every right to express their views and to protest actions by Israel, but they have no right to intimidate and to threaten people on the street, on campuses, in theatres or in neighbourhoods. To tolerate such misbehaviour is to encourage much worse actions that inevitably follow. Enough.

Source: When protests become acts of intimidation

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Rioux: La peur des mots

2024/01/06 Leave a comment

Surprising he didn’t mention “pregnant people” or “people who menstruate” as another example, or perhaps these terms have not crossed the Atlantic to France. In line with Orwell’s famous essay, “Politics and the English Language”:

La fonction des mots n’est-elle pas de dire les choses et de le dire avec le plus de clarté et de précision possible ? Longtemps, ceux qui font métier d’écrire ou de parler ont entretenu le culte du mot juste. Il s’agissait d’éviter les idées floues et les phrases imprécises. Et avec elles, ces mots qui cultivent l’imprécision, le vague ou la vacuité.

On ne m’en voudra pas de déflorer cette nouvelle année en mettant en garde contre un certain nombre de ces mots qui pullulent malheureusement dans nos médias. Car, depuis un certain nombre d’années, on a vu se multiplier ces expressions dont la fonction n’était pas de dire les choses avec précision, mais de le dire avec le plus de flou possible. Soit que leurs locuteurs souhaitaient dissimuler leurs pensées, soit qu’ils aient craint d’éventuelles représailles. À moins qu’ils n’aient tout simplement rien eu à dire, se contentant d’ânonner les expressions à la mode. Cela existe.

Malheureusement pour ces derniers, les mots, eux, ne mentent pas. Après la COVID-19, le SRAS et l’Ebola, l’épidémie du mot « personne » est certainement l’une des pires qu’on ait connues depuis longtemps. Pas une journée sans que la radio et la télévision, sous prétexte d’« inclusivité », ne nous entretiennent de « personnes handicapées », de « personnes hospitalisées » ou de « personnes itinérantes ». Sans oublier ce summum absolu de toutes ces lapalissades : la « personne humaine » !

Ce n’est pas un hasard si, à l’origine, le mot personne désignait un masque de théâtre. N’est-ce pas ce mot qu’utilisa d’ailleurs Ulysse pour tromper le Cyclope ? Voilà pourtant qu’un petit malin — probablement payé au mot — a décroché le Graal en inventant la formule « personne en situation de ». Nous voilà donc affublés de « personnes en situation de handicap », de « personnes en situation d’hospitalisation » et d’« élève en situation d’échec ». À quand la personne « en situation de bêtise » ou « en situation de sottise » ? À ce rythme, il faudra bientôt des périphrases interminables pour nommer les choses les plus simples. Tout pour mettre à distance la réalité : celle des « handicapés », des « malades » et des « cancres » !

Ces circonvolutions linguistiques ne sont pas que de simples tics de langage. Elles participent de cette rectitude politique que certains, comme l’écrivain Allan Bloom, identifièrent dès les années 1980. Cette mauvaise conscience des élites protestantes américaines est devenue depuis une véritable maladie dégénérative qui atteint tout particulièrement la langue.

J’ai tendance à penser que c’est par cette perversion du vocabulaire — qui crée en quelque sorte des « safe spaces » linguistiques où l’on ne risque plus d’être importuné par la réalité — que le wokisme a lentement gagné en influence sans faire de bruit, jusqu’à gangrener nos universités et nos médias. Car qui gagne la bataille des mots gagne la guerre.

Prenez cette recrudescence du mot « inapproprié » qui pollue les ondes et les pages des journaux. Non content d’être la plupart du temps un anglicisme (« inappropriate »), le mot semble fait sur mesure pour incriminer quelqu’un sans avoir à dire si son attitude était simplement déplacée, impolie, indécente, carrément abjecte, violente ou même criminelle.

On retrouve le même flou artistique sciemment entretenu dans ce qu’il est dorénavant convenu de nommer les « inconduites sexuelles ». Quel mot pratique pour accuser quelqu’un sans avoir à dire de quoi. La formule semble avoir été récupérée dans un manuel de bienséance de la bonne société victorienne. Elle désigne aussi bien une farce grivoise qu’un viol. On la dirait inventée par des avocats afin de jeter l’opprobre sans être accusé de diffamation. 

Mais ce qu’on sent surtout dans ces expressions, c’est une peur panique du monde réel. La peur de toucher la réalité des choses ou de « flatter le cul des vaches », aurait dit avec sa bonhomie habituelle l’ancien président Jacques Chirac. Il sera toujours plus rassurant de regarder le monde à travers un écran.

En France, on ne compte plus les formules qu’utilisent les médias pour ne pas nommer ces endroits que l’immigration de masse a transformés en ghettos. Les voilà qualifiés de « quartiers », de « cités », de « banlieues », de « périphérie », de « zone » ou de « territoire ». Que de créativité afin de dissimuler la réalité toute simple et d’éviter la critique.

Ce même désir de ne pas nommer le monde explique la soudaine recrudescence du mot « haine ». Il a notamment servi à dissimuler l’explosion, pourtant amplement documentée, de l’antisémitisme un peu partout dans le monde à la suite de l’attentat du 7 octobre contre Israël. La haine a beau être « l’hiver du coeur », disait Hugo, elle peut recouvrir tout et son contraire. Car il y a des haines légitimes. À commencer par celle de cette langue de bois, à la fois technocratique et idéologique, incomprise de la majorité, que nous assènent nos nouvelles élites à coup de « flexitariens », d’« écoanxiété », de « féminicides » et autres formules alambiquées.

« Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément », disait Nicolas Boileau. Cette bataille des mots peut sembler insignifiante, elle est pourtant au coeur des combats d’aujourd’hui. Bonne année quand même.

Source: La peur des mots

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Silent discrimination: the ongoing omission of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in census data and employment equity

2024/01/06 Leave a comment

Bit overtaken by events given the EE Taskforce recommended this change and Minister O’Regan has endorsed it. But like all changes, may take some time although the Public Servant Employee Survey is already including LGBTQ in their biennial survey. Census change is likely for the 2026 census:

Back in 2011, I applied for a faculty position at a publicly funded Canadian university. I recall (and have since reconfirmed) the section in the posting declaring the employer’s commitment to equity and diversity in the workplace. The institution welcomed applications from women, visible minorities, aboriginal (now Indigenous) people, persons with disabilities, and persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity. But the employer’s employment equity process fell short of this commitment.

As I progressed through the hiring process, I could neither identify nor be considered under employment equity criteria based on my sexual orientation as a gay man. As the university explained, this was because comparator census data on sexual orientation were not available for the Canadian population or workforce population.

All universities in Canada, and in fact all organizations with more than 100 employees receiving over $1-million per year in federal funding, are required to establish and maintain employment equity practices as part of the Federal Contractors Program. However, the program, building on the Employment Equity Act, only considers four designated equity groups: women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities. The program does not extend to sexual orientation due to the absence of national census data on sexual minorities, despite the fact that sexual orientation is one of the protected grounds from discrimination under both federal and provincial human rights laws.

More than a decade later, Statistics Canada has yet to address this glaring omission in the census data, and sexual orientation remains absent from employment equity processes. This, despite the fact that changes to the census are not uncommon. The 2021 census featured a laudable update asking Canadians to distinguish between sex at birth and gender, making provisions for data on gender identity. While this change is a duty well met, it is certainly not the laurels upon which Chief Statistician of Canada Anil Arora should rest. With the recent news that the Government of Canada has endorsed recommendations in the 2023 Report of the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force Report, Statistics Canada has been formally called to develop census questions related to all 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians. But will they?

Without data on sexual orientation, we are unable to track and analyze the employment and living status of Canadians who identify as members of sexual minority communities, nor are we able to ensure our various employment sectors reflect this country’s diverse populations. Notably, sexual orientation is the only protected group not represented on the Canadian census. This omission from the census is at best neglectful, and at worst discriminatory.

Meanwhile, in 2022, the federal government launched the first Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan which seeks to improve rights and equality for 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada. Based on a crowed-sourced national survey of over 25,000 respondents, the plan shows that discrimination, harassment, and exclusion remain a prevalent issue in the workplace for 2SLGBTQI+ communities, and that discrimination experienced during the hiring process is a substantial barrier to employment. Data also show that 2SLGBTQI+ people earn significantly lower average personal income ($39,000) compared to non-2SLGBTQI+ ($54,000) people and are more likely to live in poverty (with up to 40 per cent of Canadian homeless youth identifying as 2SLGBTQI+).

The takeaway message from the Action Plan is clear: 2SLGBTQI+ people continue to face systemic discrimination based on their sexual orientation, sex characteristics, gender identity, and gender expression. Yet without systemic data, we are left unable to redress this discrimination or create equitable access pathways to employment. We are also left unable to assess the career progressions and promotion potential of 2SLGBTQI+ once hired, potentially perpetuating the proverbial glass ceiling facing 2SLGBTQI+ people.

Following the Action Plan, the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force recently recommended recognizing 2SLGBTQI+ workers as an equity group under the Employment Equity Act, and including questions about sexual orientation on the Canadian census. However, Statistics Canada has yet to respond to these recommendations. While Statistics Canada has made important strides on the census to collect data on gender identity by including questions that identify and acknowledge transgender and non-binary Canadians, others who identify as members of sexual minority communities remain invisible—both in national data efforts and in employment equity processes. As Statistics Canada is now in the process of preparing for the 2026 census, it is the time to address this flagrant omission in data. It is time to start acknowledging 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in our census and in our employment equity processes. The time for change is now.

Christopher DeLuca is a professor at Queen’s University and lives in Kingston, Ont.

Source: Silent discrimination: the ongoing omission of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in census data and employment equity

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Terry Glavin: Immigration and housing — the elephants in Canada’s crisis room

2024/01/05 Leave a comment

Another voice adding to the chorus:

…The difficulty with having a serious national conversation about the role “immigration” plays in this intolerable state of affairs is that it’s dominated by the property industry and its various “experts,” activists possessed by a nostalgia for the social-housing idealism of the 1970s, Century Initiative ideologues fixated on growing Canada’s population to 100 million from 40 million, and cranks obsessed with conspiracy theories about white-race extinction.

Outside this cacophony are Canadians of all ethnic and racial backgrounds who persist in expressing an understanding of Canada as an idea worth holding onto and a country where immigrants are properly expected to “fit in,” and any newcomers who arrive with hatred in their hearts and sympathy for terrorist groups should be deported.

…

It’s time for a wholly new conversation, and it might begin with an honest conversation about immigration and its impact on housing affordability, cultural identity and what we mean when we use terms like “Canadian values.” Instead of the passive “policy” that always seems to favour Beijing-aligned multimillionaires, dodgy Khomeinist money-men, unscrupulous immigration consultants and bloated university budgets, an active policy would be a better idea.

We should at least have a recognizable “immigration policy,” and it needs to start by radically cutting back on the flood of “non-permanent” arrivals. From there, rather than vetting potential immigrants out, we should be vetting immigrants in. Canada could be a safe haven for refugees from the United Nations’ police state bloc, for starters — there are millions to choose from. If you’re a suitable candidate for the invaluable gift of Canadian citizenship, we’re interested. Show us. If you have a demonstrable record of standing up for liberal-democratic values, you go to the front of the line.

That would be a good start, anyway…

Source: Terry Glavin: Immigration and housing — the elephants in Canada’s crisis room

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‘All I’m doing … is working and paying bills.’ Why some are leaving Canada for more affordable countries

2024/01/04 Leave a comment

More on increasing emigration:

Statistics Canada data estimate net emigration (which subtracts emigrants who have returned from the number of those who left) at 35,337 between mid-2022 and mid-2023, its highest number since 2017.

Some of those leaving say the high cost of housing and other essentials such as food are among the factors prompting them to seek to live somewhere where their money goes further. Analysis of federal data by the British Columbia Business Council, an association representing about 250 large B.C. businesses, suggests Canadians may be feeling those pressures for some time to come.

“Government forecasts do not expect a recovery in living standards in Canada or B.C. until at least 2027,” according to a recent report by the organization. “Canada’s real [gross domestic product] is now around $1,000 per person, or around $2,500 per household, below what it was prior to the pandemic.”

Source: ‘All I’m doing … is working and paying bills.’ Why some are leaving Canada for more affordable countries

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