Anthony Albanese says his government inherited a migration system that was “not fit for purpose”. That’s true. Just how Labor expects to fix the biggest issues in migration is still not clear after the release of its response to visa fraud and exploitation on Wednesday.
According to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, she is getting on with the job of cleaning up the mess left by one particular ministerial predecessor – Peter Dutton – who she claims presided over a failing migration system that facilitated “some of the worst crimes in our society”.
The government’s commitment is to crack down much harder on visa rorts and fraudulent agents while offering up some dramatic expulsions of criminal sex and drug traffickers.
Naturally, Dutton denounces all this as a distraction on the eve of the Voice referendum, arguing he cancelled 6000 visas of criminals – far more than O’Neil has managed. He won’t be taking lectures from Labor, he insists, given its previous record of “losing control of the borders”.
The Opposition leader also blames O’Neil for “presiding” over 105,000 asylum seekers without acknowledging most arrived in the Coalition era. Labor is about to announce reforms in this area too.
But beyond trading political barbs over criminality or abuse or asylum seekers, the larger policy dilemma for the government is surging legal net overseas immigration numbers.
These are running at well over 450,000 to the year to March relative to the official annual delivery of 190,000 permanent visas for migrants.
Immigration numbers are always a sensitive issue domestically, especially in Sydney and Melbourne which attract the majority of new migrants.
How this official 190,000 permanent annual intake will work with the much higher number of temporary visa holders remains to be explained.
Successive Australian governments have always expressed pride in a highly successful multicultural society given nearly 30 per cent of people were born overseas – far more than the comparable figures in the US (14 per cent), the UK (17 per cent) or Canada (23 per cent). Another 20 per cent plus of people in Australia have at least one parent born overseas in a country that has relied heavily on waves of immigration over generations.
Given the low unemployment rate and the extreme labour shortages, business certainly wants to encourage more immigration now, whether temporary or permanent. The union movement is traditionally reluctant to endorse this rather than providing more training and jobs for Australians. But when housing supply is so scarce and rents so expensive, the politics of today’s record numbers become ever more difficult generally.
Federal governments are careful never to express detailed opinions on what the long-term targets for net overseas migration should be, wary of reviving the “big Australia” debate and, more recently, of risking Australia’s lucrative export revenue from international students.
The intergenerational reports under both the Coalition and Labor simply nominated the figure of 235,000 as a Treasury “assumption”.
“People are coming and they are staying for longer and in some instances they are not leaving,” she said. “We can’t run a sustainable migration system in that way.”
Yet, the obvious benefits in making it easier and quicker to expel criminals and dodgy long-term visa holders or blocking highly dubious international student applications will do relatively little to reduce overall numbers in Australia.
As of July this year, there are just over 2.5 million people here on temporary visas. This figure, though, includes around 700,000 New Zealanders who will now find it easier to get Australian citizenship after Labor agreed to this pathway for those who have lived here for more than four years.
As well as around 650,000 international students, 200,000 graduates, 330,000 visitors and 130,000 working holidaymakers, there are 130,000 temporary skilled workers and 190,000 temporary visa holders who are also employed.
Labor’s immigration policy reforms to be announced this month will focus on encouraging the particular skills the workforce badly needs while also allowing more temporary visa holders to become permanent residents.
Measures will include simplifying the plethora of categories and visas, reforming the current complicated “points” system and fast-tracking approvals for both highly paid professionals and for lower paid workers in aged care. Temporary visa holders won’t have to remain with their sponsor employer.
Yet how this official 190,000 permanent annual intake will work with the much higher number of temporary visa holders remains to be explained.
Some of those on temporary visas and already here, including international students, will be granted permanent status from that annual quota, for example. But many more temporary visa holders have been staying despite having no real prospects of being granted permanent residency while new temporary visa holders continue to flood in. There are 200,000 more international students who have arrived since the beginning of the year.
The government’s tougher compliance and education standards for student visas – as well as a reduction in work hours permitted – may reduce that imbalance over time. But it’s hard to imagine Labor can engage in mass deportation, especially when many of those here can legally extend their stay by enrolling in more courses.
Such training should logically fit with Australia’s desperate need for more skills and trained workers – assuming, of course, that the courses are appropriately tailored and adequate to address the real shortages.
So far, meeting that goal, too, has proven elusive.
Jobs and Skills Australia’s report released on Wednesday notes Australia faces a skills challenge not seen since the 1960s. It predicts that as well as building the necessary training and skills in the vocational and higher education sectors, the government’s migration reforms will allow skilled migration to effectively address labour shortages and boost productivity.
Plus ça change. But experts also need to be aware of how their background and ideological leanings can influence their expertise:
L’instauration d’un programme éducatif représente le bien commun d’une nation et concerne tous les citoyens. Il est donc particulièrement important de suivre un processus démocratique et transparent pour décider de ses orientations et de ses contenus.
Ainsi, dans le cadre de changements à apporter à un programme d’enseignement, il est nécessaire de s’appuyer sur des avis d’experts reconnus de cette discipline, afin de comprendre les éventuels dysfonctionnements et les améliorations à y apporter, et ce, à partir d’une démonstration scientifique rigoureuse. Or, la transition du programme d’éthique et culture religieuse (ECR) vers le cours Culture et citoyenneté québécoise (CCQ) constitue un intéressant contre-modèle de ces principes, d’autant plus surprenant qu’il se présente comme un modèle d’éducation à la citoyenneté.
Professeure en éducation à l’Université de Montréal et spécialiste du programme d’éthique et culture religieuse, je souhaite partager ici quelques réflexions sur la façon dont celui-ci, au Québec, a récemment été supprimé et remplacé par le cours Culture et citoyenneté québécoise. Certaines écoles ont déjà fait le choix d’offrir ce programme depuis septembre 2023, mais ce n’est qu’en 2024 qu’il sera enseigné de façon obligatoire dans toutes les écoles.
Une absence de délibération politique et citoyenne transparente
En janvier 2020, le ministre de l’Éducation du Québec d’alors, Jean-François Roberge, déclare sa volonté de réformer le cours ECR et, en particulier de réduire la culture religieuse qui occupe à ses yeux une place trop importante. Il souhaite la remplacer par l’éducation à la sexualité de même que par un ensemble de nouvelles thématiques.
Il annonce mettre aussitôt en place un processus de consultation citoyenne par la diffusion d’un questionnaire en ligne et la possibilité pour toute personne de déposer un mémoire. Or, tout ce processus est marqué à chaque étape par une grande opacité de la part du ministère de l’Éducation. Il refuse non seulement de communiquer les résultats du questionnaire, mais aussi de rendre public les mémoires déposés par les citoyens et les associations et de diffuser les conclusions du bilan qu’il a lui-même réalisé sur l’enseignement du programme ECR dans les écoles.
De plus, contrairement à ce qui avait été fait pour l’instauration du programme ECR, aucune commission parlementaire avec des auditions publiques n’est organisée, ni aucune délibération politique et citoyenne transparente n’est engagée pour discuter des contenus du nouveau programme CCQ.
Cette façon de procéder, plutôt inhabituelle, témoigne d’une volonté du ministre d’imposer ses propres choix sans les soumettre à la discussion. Elle tend à accréditer l’idée que les résultats et les analyses qui ne vont pas dans le sens de ce que le gouvernement souhaite sont mis de côté. Le témoignage de la première responsable de la révision du programme au ministère de l’Éducation, qui a choisi de démissionner suite aux interventions répétées du cabinet ministériel, le montre clairement.
La délégitimation des experts
Lors de l’annonce de sa volonté de réviser le programme ECR et d’en supprimer la culture religieuse, le ministre Roberge affirme s’appuyer sur des avis d’experts.
Cependant, il ne révèlera jamais qui sont ces spécialistes, sur quoi repose leur expertise et en quoi consistent précisément leurs analyses critiques. L’ouvrage que je viens de publier à ce sujetanalyse le contexte de ces critiques, tout particulièrement les différentes conceptions de la laïcité et des libertés de conscience et de religion, ainsi que les nombreux défis éducatifs que représente l’implantation d’un nouveau programme scolaire.
Il montre que bon nombre d’études critiques du cours ECR, s’affranchissant aisément des critères qui guident la recherche scientifique, relèvent du discours militant et du registre de la dénonciation : le programme est tour à tour accusé d’inviter au relativisme religieux, mais aussi d’être un outil de propagande confessionnelle. Il est vu comme une imposition du multiculturalisme et une promotion des accommodements raisonnables, et est jugé comme portant atteinte aux libertés de conscience et de religion.
Malgré leurs faiblesses, en particulier méthodologiques, ces discours ont tellement saturé l’espace médiatique qu’ils en sont venus à s’imposer comme une parole de vérité. Au même moment, dans les décisions ministérielles de modifier le programme ECR, on assiste à une mise à l’écart délibérée des spécialistes qui possèdent une réelle expertise, tant les universitaires experts de ce domaine que les enseignants, en particulier du secondaire. Ce sont pourtant eux qui mettent en œuvre au quotidien le programme dans les écoles. Ils ne sont ni consultés ni même informés en amont des décisions du ministre de l’Éducation.
Même un avis d’une institution aussi importante que le Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, qui a pris le temps de mener une consultation sérieuse, est ignoré. Or, un programme d’enseignement devrait être élaboré sur la base d’analyses rigoureuses et bien informées. Ce n’est clairement pas le cas ici. Pour quelles raisons alors ignorer l’avis des experts et refuser la délibération scientifique et démocratique ?
Un projet éducatif politique
Le but de cette réforme du programme ECR est à la fois d’exclure la culture religieuse du champ des connaissances scolaires et de réaffirmer un certain type de laïcité.
De plus, ces associations jugent que la Loi 21, votée en 2019, qui proclame que l’État du Québec est laïque, est incompatible avec le cours ECR, comme si le respect de la laïcité exigeait l’invisibilisation du religieux, y compris dans le champ des connaissances scolaires. Pourtant, historiquement, l’étude des faits religieux comme objets de culture s’inscrit dans une perspective scientifique, voire laïque, qui la détache de ses ancrages confessionnels.
Par ailleurs le cours Culture et citoyenneté québécoise cherche à répondre à un grand nombre de problématiques sociales qui se trouvent dans l’air du temps : écocitoyenneté, citoyenneté numérique, prévention de la violence sexuelle, engagement politique, etc. Il s’inscrit dans une perspective où l’école est vue comme devant remédier à des problèmes de société jugés prioritaires à un moment donné. Il s’agit alors de promouvoir le développement chez les élèves de compétences comportementales et sociales, plutôt que cognitives, dans le but de favoriser des conduites considérées comme acceptables.
Ce modèle relève davantage de la mission de socialisation de l’école que de celle de l’instruction. Le principe même de transmission aux élèves d’un noyau significatif de connaissances dans l’élaboration d’une culture humaniste, par exemple sur les religions, semble alors dépassé au profit du développement des compétences des jeunes, afin qu’ils deviennent des citoyens efficaces dans leur siècle.
I really enjoyed working on this analysis with the ICC. Check out the report and tables:
The proportion of permanent residents taking up Canadian citizenship within ten years of arrival declined 40% between 2001 and 2021. Today, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship is publishing a new analysis conducted by expert researcher Andrew Griffith, which examines this trend more closely.
Key findings from the research
1. Naturalization is declining across all major source countries
Less than 50% of citizenship-eligible permanent residents from top immigration source countries are becoming Canadian citizens within ten years of arrival. This is the case for permanent residents from China (30%), India (49%), South Korea (35%), United Kingdom (43%) and United States of America (48%), among other top source countries.
2. Source country restrictions on dual nationality have a limited impact on naturalization rates
A prevailing theory on the cause of declining naturalization rates is that a growing number of immigrants to Canada come from countries that prohibit multiple citizenships. This research debunks this claim. The proportion of permanent residents from countries that prohibit naturalization has grown, but the increase in the number of permanent residents choosing not to become citizens is higher amongst source countries that allow dual citizenship. Between Census 2016 and Census 2021, the number of permanent residents from India choosing not to become Canadian citizens increased by 47%. For permanent residents from China, it increased by 40%. Both countries prohibit dual nationality. For those from the Philippines, which allows dual nationality, the number of permanent residents choosing not to become Canadian citizens increased by 64%.
3. Permanent residents are taking longer to become citizens
For those who do become citizens, the time between arrival and naturalization has increased significantly. Between 2005 and 2022, permanent residents who arrived under the Economic category took 21% longer to naturalize at 6.1 years on average. For the Family Reunification Class, time increased 17% to 7.4 years on average. Among source countries, time to naturalization for permanent residents from China increased almost 70% to 7.9 years, while for the Philippines it increased almost 30% to 6.6 years. India remained relatively stable at 6.1 years on average. Permanent residents from Iran saw the largest increase overall, 181%, taking 12.5 years to naturalize, on average.
4. The ten years following arrival are critical
While fewer permanent residents are naturalizing overall, 92% of naturalizations take place within ten years. In other words, if a permanent resident chooses not to become a Canadian citizen within ten years of arriving in Canada, it is unlikely that they will ever choose to do so. This finding highlights the first ten years as a critical period to intervene.
Suggestions on how to navigate or manage diaspora politics:
The number of federal ridings in which immigrants make up more than half of all voters has grown to 33 in Canada, almost all in pivotal Metro Vancouver and Toronto.
Politicians are desperate to find ways to appeal to the “immigrant vote” in those 33 exceptional ridings — as well as in 122 more electoral districts where the share of immigrants ranges from a consequential 20 to 50 per cent.
Efforts to woo immigrant groups were on display last month when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau inflamed India with the accusation that its agents appeared to be involved in the slaying of a pro-Khalistan activist in Surrey.
One of Trudeau’s unstated aims seemed to be to show support for the country’s 770,000 Sikhs, most of whom are in immigrant families. Unfortunately, Trudeau also alienated many of Canada’s 828,000 Hindus.
Chasing after immigrant voters is a tricky, fraught business.
How best can politicians appeal to immigrants, who have become a force to be reckoned with in almost half of the country’s federal ridings? It’s not easy when immigrants come from disparate countries, ethnicities and religions. Political parties are constantly trying to figure out what appeals to immigrant populations through their private polling, which they resolutely decline to share with journalists.
Here are a few thoughts from experts on working with voters who are immigrants:
Focus on across-the-spectrum issues
Regardless of whether immigrants come from India, China or the Philippines, many issues affect both immigrants and non-immigrants in roughly the same way: All people relate to policies on taxation, employment, education and cost of living.
Defend immigrants against intimidation, foreign and domestic
Since many immigrants not only come to Canada to take advantage of economic opportunities, but also to escape discrimination in their homelands, Andre Machalski, whose company Mirens monitors Canada’s more than 800 ethnic media outlets, says politicians can benefit by defending immigrants’ rights.
That’s a tack Trudeau took when he declared there were “credible allegations” that Indian agents were involved in the June murder of a pro-Khalistan activist outside a Surrey gurdwara.
“Trudeau’s unassailable message to all immigrants is, ‘We will stand up for you,’” said Machalski.
That message can hit home for people who have left behind all sorts of conflict-ridden nations, whether China, Ukraine or Nigeria.
Andrew Griffith, a former high-level director in Canada’s immigration department, says politicians believe they benefit electorally by defending immigrants, 70 per cent of whom are people of colour, from hate or discrimination.
Be in power
It’s conventional political theory that a party draws votes by being in office when a newcomer obtains citizenship status, which includes the right to vote.
B.C. radio talk-show host Harjit Singh Gill is among those convinced one reason Trudeau has hiked migration to record levels is he realizes immigrants and refugees, whether from Iran, Syria or India, “will vote for him because of it. They will worship him, think he’s a hero.”
Since the Liberal party has been in power more than the Conservatives in the past three decades, many say that’s one reason polls generally show immigrants lean toward the Liberals.
The Liberals have raised the immigration target to 500,000 a year, double the number when they came into office. Canada’s population grew by a record 1.1 million last year, 98 per cent due to migrants. CIBC Capital Market economist Benjamin Tal adds Ottawa has also allowed in two million foreign students and guest workers, most of whom yearn to be citizens.
Recognize both pros and cons of migration policy can draw votes
It’s time for politicians to get over the idea immigration is a “third rail,” too controversial to touch, Griffith writes in Policy Options.
Many immigrant families, like many other Canadians, are concerned about immigration levels, Griffith says. While generally pro-immigration, they fear the negative effects of Ottawa inviting too many newcomers too rapidly, particularly because they contribute to demand on housing and medical services, both of which are in crisis.
Sponsoring older immigrants is a winner. And loser
Trudeau’s cabinet ministers often boast they have quadrupled the number of parents and grandparents that can be sponsored to move to Canada. The expanding program aims to bring in 28,500 older family members this year, 34,000 next year and 36,000 in 2025.
“It’s both a real vote getter, and a real vote loser,” says Griffith.
While many immigrants want to bring their parents or grandparents here, others worry about the drain on publicly funded health services, since they arrive as seniors and haven’t had the chance to pay significant taxes in Canada.
Informing parents on pronouns
Since polls show immigrants tend to come from socially conservative cultures, it’s not surprising many Canadian Muslims, most of whom are immigrants, have been at the forefront of opposition to school districts refusing to tell parents if their children want to change their gender pronouns at school.
An Angus Reid poll found 78 per cent of all Canadians believe parents should be informed if their child wants to change their gender identity or pronoun at school.
Support ethnocultural groups, and be honest
The ethnic media in Canada, Machalski says, is full of examples of politicians saying one thing to one ethnic group and another to the wider public. That plays out whether the contentious subject is Khalistan or attending a banquet hosted by an organization that is a mouthpiece for China. When courting immigrant groups, politicians should avoid speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
Show up
The old-fashioned way of wooing a group, whether immigrant or otherwise, might still be best. Show up at town halls, shake some hands, get to know people. For what it’s worth, Machalski, who was born in Argentina, believes these days that Conservative party Leader Pierre Poilievre is showing up the most — “making serious inroads” into immigrant communities.
The timing for Poilievre is also auspicious, Machalski says. “He is going up in the polls, and like most people, immigrants like to back a winner.”
Earlier this year, IRCC received a report from one of its previous Deputy Ministers, Neil Yeates, on how IRCC can become a more effective and efficient department. Yeates’ report was commissioned by IRCC to evaluate whether the department’s current structure best enables it to achieve its mandate. The Deputy Minister is the senior-most civil servant in a government department. Serving in a non-political role, they oversee the management of their department, including implementation of policies and strategies and managing people and budgets.
IRCC’s current Deputy Minister, Christiane Fox, corresponds with the department’s minister, who is a politician, and is currently Immigration Minister Marc Miller. The Immigration Minister’s role is to implement the elected mandate of the government.
Yeates: IRCC’s organizational model is broken
In his report, which CIC News has been able to obtain a copy of, Yeates concludes “the current organizational model at IRCC is broken but is being held together by the hard work and dedication of staff.”
He recommends “a series of steps need to be taken to realign the organizational structure (including a major shift to a business line-based structure), reform the governance system, implement stronger management systems (especially planning and reporting) and facilitate the development of a culture to better support the department’s goals and objectives (including consideration of an overall review of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and measures to better leverage the experience and expertise of diverse staff groups).”
Yeates explains there are numerous reasons why IRCC’s current model is broken, but highlights two that stand out in particular: a difficult operating environment in Canada and globally; and secondly, IRCC has grown exponentially since its current organizational structure was introduced over 20 years ago. To highlight this point, Yeates notes IRCC’s total workforce has grown from 5,352 employees in March 2023 to 12,949 employees as of January 2023.
Fox: IRCC “felt like crisis”
In an interview last week with journalist Paul Wells, Fox, stated the Yeates report will influence significant changes the department plans to pursue. Upon assuming her role at IRCC in July 2022, Fox explained to Wells the new job “felt like crisis” and that her colleagues at the department were under duress and exhausted. She concluded that departmental changes were necessary, and while she didn’t want to make them immediately, she also didn’t want to wait two years.
In June 2023, Fox had a plan of action after receiving the Yeates report and consulting with public stakeholders including IRCC applicants. Since then, she has been gradually rolling out the changes.
IRCC reorganized to business-line model
Among the changes is that last week, the department was re-organized across the following sectors:
Asylum and Refugees Resettlement
Citizenship and Passport
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Information Officer
Client Service, Innovation, and Chief Digital Officer
Communications
Corporate Services
Economic, Family, and Social Migration
International Affairs and Crisis Response
Migration Integrity
Service Delivery
Settlement Integration and Francophone Affairs
Strategic Policy
Fox explains that, as was recommended by Yeates, the department is now being organized across lines of business. What this means is IRCC employees will be divided across the various clients that the department services, as well as divided in a way to be response to changes around the world. For example, the department has a new International Affairs and Crisis Response sector, which Fox noted to Wells is meant to help IRCC better plan for humanitarian crises and shape a plan of action. IRCC routinely deal with these, such as with Ukraine since last year, and recent Afghanistan and Syrian refugee resettlement initiatives, just to name a few examples.
Fox also stresses the importance of IRCC taking more of a client focus moving forward whereby the department incorporates the experiences of its applicants more strongly into the decisions it makes.
IRCC’s operating environment
Yeates elaborates on the various forces impacting IRCC, the main ones being:
Hybrid Work Environment and COVID-19: The nature of work appears to be changing permanently due to the pandemic, and as such, more workers, including IRCC employees, are working remotely, with a general direction to return to the office 2-3 days per week. Yeates explains while work-from-home has been effective, it remains to be seen what the impacts will be on IRCC’s organizational culture.
Demand for IRCC Services: Demand for IRCC’s programs often exceeds the department’s processing capacity as measured by its service standards (the goals the department sets for itself to process applications for each line of business). Although IRCC has tools and resources at its disposal to manage its inventory, such as caps for certain programs, its inventories can grow very quickly whenever demand for its programs exceeds its processing capacity.
Growth of IRCC: As demand for IRCC’s program has grown, so too has its workforce. Yeates characterizes its workforce as “medium sized” in 2013, with 5,217 non-executive staff, which has more than doubled by 2023 to 12,721 staff. Executives at the department have grown from 135 employees in 2013 to 227 today. However, despite the program and staff growth, the organizational structure at IRCC, which was designed for a smaller department, has largely remained the same.
Immigration Policy Review: The dominant immigration narrative in Canada has not generally been challenged, and that the actual impact of immigration is not generally well documented. As such, an immigration policy review at IRCC may be beneficial in helping IRCC shape the department’s future direction.
Digital Transformation: IRCC has received significant funding for its Digital Platform Modernization, and such transformations are always challenging, particularly at a place like IRCC which has many significant responsibilities. However there is little doubt that IRCC needs to become a fully digital department.
Global Uncertainty: Global armed conflicts are on the rise, democracy is under threat, and factors such as climate change are impacting global demand to migrate, which will continue to have a significant impact on IRCC.
IRCC departmental culture is “committed”
While stressing the purpose of his report is not to be critical, Yeates observes IRCC currently has limited department-wide planning, lacks a multi-year strategic plan, and planning across the department is inconsistent, all of which pose a variety of challenges such as the inability to achieve the department’s goals and lack of accountability among staff.
IRCC staff described the departmental culture as “committed, collaborative, and supportive”, which has helped to overcome the department’s organizational structure, governance, and management systems shortcomings.
Moreover, Yeates pointed to a tension within the department between what he calls the “IRPA school” and the “client service school.” He observes that the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was introduced in 2001 with a framework to exclude applicants, with many reasons listed as to why an applicant may be denied. Immigration officers are trained to enforce IRPA, but little attention has historically been paid to the potential for these officers to have “unconscious bias” which may impact their decision-making.
On the other side are those who fall under the “client service school” and are willing to waive requirements and more open to compromise in order to improve the service that IRCC clients receive.
Highlights of Yeates’ recommendations
Overall, Yeates makes recommendations across four areas: Organizational Structure; Governance; Management Systems; and Culture. Highlights of the recommendations are as follows:
Organizational Structure Recommendations:
IRCC move to a business line organization
IRCC develop protocols for crisis and emergency management that identify Assistant Deputy Minister leads in various scenarios
Governance Recommendations:
The Executive Committee assume responsibility for finance and corporate services and absorb the functions of the Corporate Finance Committee
A new Operations Committee be established, chaired by the Deputy Minister’s Office, that will absorb the functions of the Issues Management Committee
That the membership of these committees be reconsidered as part of the re-organization process and that membership be no larger than 12
A review be conducted on the split of responsibilities between IRCC and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) under IRPA in order to rationalize and streamline roles and accountabilities
Management System Recommendations:
Deputy Minister lead a new planning and reporting regime
Develop a 3 to 5 year strategic plan
Undertake an annual planning cycle across all areas of the department, including HR, IT, Financial and Program plans
Implement a quarterly reporting regime
Ensure linkages with the department’s performance management work
Culture Recommendations:
Undertake a review of IRPA to determine whether amendments should be made to better support desired outcomes, including improved service delivery.
Review the training provided to staff involved in the administration of IRPA to ensure if reflects the desired philosophy and approach of the department.
Examine means to integrate the voices of IRCC’s diversity communities into the departmental governance regime
A brouhaha broke out recently when it was revealed that TED treated a talk on color blindness by Coleman Hughes (who is black, if that matters), with surprising levels of hostility. Mr. Hughes and TED seem to agree on the broad outlines of what happened. Mr. Hughes argued in favor of color-blind thinking; this offended some staff at TED, resulting in delays, unusual scrutiny, and alleged failure to promote Mr. Hughes’ video. This raised familiar concerns that institutions are throttling free speech and rigorous debate in the name of satiating a few easily offended individuals.
One defense raised by TED for their actions was that Mr. Hughes’ defense of color blindness wasn’t scientifically grounded. They pointed to one particular meta-analysis, which analyzed the impact of color blindness and race consciousness in the form of multiculturalism on several outcomes. TED argued this meta-analysis questions the value of color blindness. Mr. Hughes countered that this meta-analysis actually supports color blindness. So, which is it?
I decided to have a closer look at the study in question. Upfront, it’s worth noting one thing: as I’ve argued before, meta-analyses are poor debate enders. Generally, they tend to artificially smooth over inconsistencies in the data (which the authors of this meta-analysis themselves acknowledge), they tend to overestimate support for hypotheses, and researcher choices can produce divergent meta-analytic conclusions. But, for the moment, we’ll ignore that.
Although the authors purport to compare color-blind to race-conscious approaches, I’m not convinced they actually isolated this. It’s well known that many race-conscious approaches, whether in DEI training, implicit bias training, microaggression awareness, etc., either don’t work or backfire. A thorough discussion of this appeared to be missing from the manuscript.
Instead, the authors focus on a vaguer concept of multiculturalism which they define as “acknowledging differences by learning about, maintaining, or valuing them.” This seems to be a very soft version of identity consciousness, not nearly as likely to concern people as, say, the white fragility concept or segregating school kids by race for affinity groups. I’m not sure their definition of multiculturalism is even contradictory to color blindness.
The authors consider four outcomes: prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and what they call “policy support,” which they define as “positive attitudes toward policies aimed at increasing diversity by granting resources to non-dominant groups.” This later category, while undoubtedly good in intention, also appears to be explicitly racially discriminatory (as with affirmative action) and could reasonably be expected to be opposed by color blindness in good faith.
Some of the meta-analytic results appeared to be underpowered, particularly for studies of color blindness. Focusing on effect size, and consistent with Mr. Hughes’ read, color blindness tends to be associated with more positive outcomes, some more strongly than others. So was multiculturalism, with the exception that it was associated with more “neutral” stereotyping (a tendency to see groups as culturally different—an outcome I’d argue is actually rather negative for a multiethnic society).
Taken at face value, I think the authors could argue multiculturalism had a stronger impact on some outcomes such as prejudice and discrimination, but we’ll return to that face value in just a moment. Yet the main difference was regarding policy support. Color-blind approaches were associated with less policy support, whereas multiculturalism was associated with more policy support.
Whether that’s good or bad is a subjective evaluation—likely depending on whether the reader likes those policies themselves. I’m concerned that this has been something of a common rhetorical trick by progressive scholars. For instance, some economists claimed that 2016 Trump voters were motivated by “racism,” though the surveys they used for this claim tended to involve disagreement with specifically progressive views of race, such as support of affirmative action or belief that racism is widespread, rather than actually endorsing hateful views of others.
Of course, there are also reasons not to take the meta-analytic results at face value. As mentioned, the authors used a rather vanilla definition of multiculturalism, and deftly avoided the most controversial areas of race-consciousness. This certainly affected effect sizes. Moreover, from the start (including the chosen quotes by Justices Day-O’Connor and Sotomayor at the beginning of the article), I had the sense that the authors really wanted multiculturalism to win, and this may have influenced their interpretations.
In short, there are reasonable debates about the meaningfulness of the comparisons between multiculturalism and color blindness. But there was nothing in this meta-analysis that should have been used to conclude Mr. Coleman’s TED talk was unscientific or contrary to the (very weak) scientific evidence.
Another example of the need to have more honest discussions on immigration and illustration of the conceit that Canada has a “managed immigration system”:
In March, Washington and Ottawa agreed to close Roxham Road, the small alley in Quebec through which thousands of asylum seekers have entered Canada from the United States, bypassing customs. Nearly 40,000 people entered Canada through Roxham Road in 2022; there were a record 91,710 claimants last year.
So despite the closing, why has Canada already processed more than 80,000 applications from asylum seekers so far this year?
Part of the answer, it appears, is that the international airports in Montreal and Toronto have become magnets for asylum claimants. According to Radio-Canada, immigration authorities quietly implemented a new policy to expedite temporary visa processing, including removing the need for proof that applicants will leave Canada at the end of their stay. This has reportedly made it easier for people who would normally have difficulty obtaining tourist visas to enter and then claim asylum upon arrival. This contrasts with decades-long policy characterized by restrictive visa rules and airline sanctions for travellers boarding with false documents.
Recently published statistics also show that immigration offices in Ontario and Quebec are receiving many inland claimants: migrants who entered Canada either legally or illegally, and then only afterward applied for asylum. This had already been happening when Roxham Road was open; in 2022, Canada received another 50,000 asylum claims from migrants who were already within the country. So far this year, the situation is similar.
The problem is that the government has not been forthcoming about these numbers or the policy that potentially led to them. There is no public data showing how many overstayed their visa-prescribed visits, or how many circumvented the recently tightened Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. And this lack of transparency could leave Canadians to wonder if Ottawa is hiding that it has shifted to a relatively open-border approach.
Asylum seekers want to come to Canada because it is a rich country that offers unparalleled treatment, including generous benefits and almost-guaranteed citizenship for those granted protection; in many other regions, they often barely receive adequate food and shelter, and exist precariously at the whim of host governments. But interestingly, the influx of claimants in Canada is not necessarily related to global trends. Even though Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan are the top source countriesfor migrants in need of international protection, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board reports that our top source this year is Mexico; India is our fifth-highest source.
Unlike the U.S., Canada has not required visas for Mexicans since 2016, though we are well beyond the numbers that previously triggered the reimposition of visa requirements; Washington has asked Ottawa to reinstate them, to prevent entry to the U.S. from its northern border. And despite current diplomatic tensions with India, it has been our top source country for accepted permanent residents and temporary students – so it is odd that it is also a leading country of origin for asylum claimants.
Neither Mexico nor India is embroiled in political upheaval or armed conflict. So why are these among our top source countries?
A distinct vision of asylum policy appears to be emerging from the Trudeau Liberals: one that is generous, in allowing people from less privileged countries to enter Canada legally as a way of regularizing migration. The approach could also be seen as practical, in that it contributes to our demographic expansion by welcoming particularly determined individuals who would otherwise not be admitted under standard immigration streams. And it is politically attractive for humanitarian self-promotion.
But it remains to be seen whether an anxious public is ready to normalize yearly asylum claims that could number in the six digits. While reasonable people can disagree on the appropriate response to record numbers of asylum claims, a healthy liberal democracy will try to balance the basic dignity of asylum seekers and the legitimate interests of the host population. But it has become difficult in Canada to have honest discussions about our commitments. If the federal government is implementing policy changes on visa issuance, then it needs to be upfront about it, given the implications for resource planning, including at the provincial and municipal levels as well as among grassroots refugee organizations.
Canada’s immigration system has worked to date because it is highly controlled and focused on selecting migrants that advance the country’s needs. It is not intended to promote an ideological world view that believes there is global injustice resulting from a supposed birthright lottery that limits poor migrants from travelling freely. To maintain the country’s pro-immigration consensus in the real world, however, our leaders cannot view asylum in such a blue-sky way. But at the very minimum, they need to give us the information we need to have a real debate.
Michael Barutciski is a faculty member of York University’s Glendon College. He teaches law and policy with a focus on migration issues.
Valid reflections on the risks of deeper multiculturalism approaches rather than civic integration variants:
Has multiculturalism failed?” It is a debate that raged a decade ago but had seemed to have faded into the political background in recent years. Until, that is, the home secretary, Suella Braverman, attempted to light the fires again, in a speech she gave last week to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. Multiculturalism, she argued, “has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it”.
Her real audience, as many commentators observed, were not the people sitting in the room but the Conservative party back home. Braverman did not engage seriously with any of the issues she raised, from asylum to multiculturalism, but sought rather to position herself as the right’s flagbearer in any upcoming Tory leadership battle.
Nevertheless, Braverman’s speech, and the debate it unleashed, provides an opportunity to think again about multiculturalism. Part of the difficulty in making sense of this debate is that the term is used in two distinct ways: a description both of the lived experience of diversity and of the policies necessary to manage such a society.
The experience of living in a society that is less homogenous and insular, more open and cosmopolitan, is something to welcome and cherish. As a political process, however, multiculturalism means something very different: a set of policies and practices, the aim of which is to manage diversity by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes, and using those boxes to define people’s needs and obligations.
The conflation of lived experience and political policy has proved highly invidious. It has allowed many on the right – and not just on the right – to blame mass immigration for the failures of social policy and to turn minorities into the problem. It has also led many liberals and radicals to become more detached from classical notions of liberty, such as free speech, in the name of defending diversity.
All these issues, from immigration to free speech, are central to contemporary politics, but the context has changed as the old debates about multiculturalism have shifted. Partly, this is because multiculturalism, in both its meanings, is more embedded in our social fabric.
Britain has become more welcoming of diversity – 72% of Britons think that “having a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures is part of British culture”; three-quarters are comfortable with mixed-race relationships. From the labour market to policing, racism still disfigures many lives. Nevertheless, minorities flourish in a way that would have been unimaginable half a century ago. From this perspective, diversity in Britain has worked, and worked better than in most European nations.
At the same time, barriers between communities have solidified as policies have encouraged people to view themselves through an identitarian lens. From the clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Leicester to the Peckham shop incident, which were turned into a racial conflict between black people and Asians, the conception of Britain as a “community of communities”, in the words of the influential Parekh report on multiculturalism published in 2000, has helped entrench communal divisions and racialise social tensions.
And then there are cases such as the Batley school row, in which a teacher was suspended after protests for showing pupils an image of Muhammad from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a religious studies class. He was cleared by an independent panel, but three years on is apparently still in hiding because of death threats. Or incidents such as Muslim parents protesting against the inclusion of gay relationships in school sex and relationship education lessons.
Such controversies show how social frictions can become transformed into communal conflicts within a “community of communities” setting and how the policing of “offence” has become a means of strengthening community boundaries. They also reveal the way multicultural policies shape relations not just between communities but within them, too. Too often, minority communities are viewed as homogenous wholes, and certain individuals or institutions are given, or appropriate for themselves, the role of “gatekeepers”, defining what is acceptable to say to, or about, that community. It is a process that frequently silences the voices of those with less power – women, gay people, young people, non-believers. It is one of the reasons that so many flashpoints over “offence” have featured the work of minority writers and artists, from Salman Rushdie to Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, from Monica Ali to MF Husain.
At the same time, the ambiguity in the meaning of multiculturalism has been exploited by the right. The problems of racialisation and division created by policies that seek to manage diversity have been translated into hostility to immigration and to diversity itself. In her Washington speech, Braverman included France as a nation revealing the harms of “multiculturalism”. Given that France is hostile to the very idea of multiculturalism, insisting instead on assimilationist policies, Braverman was signallinghere that by “multiculturalism” she was referring not to particular policies, but simply to the fact of a diverse nation.
Many rightwing critics excoriate the “tribalism” of multiculturalism and of identity politics. Few, though, are more invested in such politics. From the bemoaning of Europeans “losing their homeland” to the charge that white Britons are “surrendering [their] territory” to alarm about London becoming a “minority white” city, rightwing critics of immigration and multiculturalism often revel in the very kinds of social division they claim to despise.
We should have no truck with such critiques that seek to rebrand racism. That should not stop us, though, from being critical of multicultural policies that entrap diversity and create communal frictions.
When we talk of diversity, what we mean is that the world is a messy place, full of difference and disagreement. That messiness is the stuff of political and cultural engagement, allowing us to expand our horizons, engage with different values, beliefs and lifestyles, and through such engagement to work our way to a richer understanding of the world, and to a more universal language of belonging.
In seeking to put people into ethnic, cultural and faith boxes, and to police the boundaries of those boxes, multiculturalism as a political process undermines much of what is valuable about diversity as lived experience. The fact that rightwing critiques of multiculturalism are often laced with bigotry should not obscure the problems with multicultural policies themselves.
An old joke has it that the most boring possible news story would read: “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.” And yet in the past two weeks, Canada has managed the surprising feat of making global headlines not once but twice, though by now its leaders may well wish it hadn’t.
The first instance came when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused India of assassinating a Khalistan separatist on Canadian soil; the second, when it emerged that Parliament had hosted a Ukrainian veteran of the Nazi paramilitary Waffen-SS.
What is interesting about both cases – aside from the fact that they brought such attention to Canada – is that they each involve what George Orwell called “transferred nationalism,” in which people glorify a country to which they do not actually belong. This is an underappreciated phenomenon in world politics, being much more common than many realize. And it is one to which Canada may be especially prone given its own weakening national ties.
Canadians have long prided themselves on their “mosaic” model of a multicultural society, in contrast to the “melting pot” version on display to the south. Part of their self-understanding is that Canada’s multicultural democracy does not require assimilation as a precondition of peaceable coexistence. This easygoing cosmopolitanism goes hand in hand with a certain complacency, however, as Canada increasingly fails to supplement it with a positive account of its own national identity.
The Belgian writer Émile Cammaerts (in a remark widely attributed to G. K. Chesterton) said that a man who ceases to believe in God doesn’t believe in nothing but in anything. Something like this is increasingly borne out with respect to Canadian political life, as diaspora politics at home and foreign causes abroad rush into the vacuum that ordinary patriotism once filled.
For the former, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a leader of a niche movement to establish Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland in northern India. This is a cause that has found passionate (and at times violent) support almost entirely outside of India itself. This may seem surprising but is hardly unusual. Nationalisms often form in exile – famously (and ironically, given the present circumstances), Mahatma Gandhi developed his vision of Indian nationalism while in South Africa.
Of course, their right to peacefully organize is not in dispute. But it’s fair to say their geopolitical goals are separate from those of most Canadians and for that matter of Ottawa, and they have caused serious complications in Canada’s relationship with a major regional power.
Meanwhile, the case of Ukraine is on the surface quite different. The passion that Canadians have manifested for the Ukrainian cause is not limited to an ethnic minority, suggesting that it has fulfilled certain patriotic longings, even among our cosmopolitan elites. In Orwell’s words, such a person “still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself.”
Unsurprisingly, the feting of a Nazi fellow-traveller on Parliament Hill has brought condemnation and alarm from Jewish organizations. Speaking as a Jew myself, I don’t think this episode betrays some latent antisemitism among Canada’s governing class. But it does indicate the pitfalls that await those who attach themselves to foreign causes, the complex history of which they only dimly comprehend.
And it must be said that the embarrassments and complications of these recent weeks might have been avoided had Canada’s political elites better tended their obligations to address the real interests of the citizens they notionally represent. The point here is not that Canada needs to embark on a program of promoting its own homegrown nationalism (what would that even look like – ”freedom fries” but for maple syrup?). But it wouldn’t be amiss for its leaders to work on articulating their vision of the country’s national interests.
The language of national interests is admittedly in low repute these days, smacking as it does of amoral power politics. But because national interests are necessarily tied to the material concerns of the whole of a country’s citizens, they can have a moderating effect on both ideological passions and factional agendas, shaping a sense of shared democratic political community. And in the absence of such an account, we are likely to see more instances of transferred nationalism in Canadian politics going forward.
Thus, restoring the habits of reflecting on and speaking in terms of national interests could well prove salutary for elected officials and citizens alike. At a minimum, it might help keep Canada out of international news stories for a cycle or two.
Multicultural Meanderings 