Une laïcité à géométrie variable

2023/08/16 Leave a comment

Useful reminder:

Je ne suis pas entièrement d’accord avec le titre de la lettre de Benoît Pelletier (« La laïcité, un principe phare de l’identité profonde du Québec », Le Devoir, 5 août 2023) et plusieurs de ses énoncés, mais je suis d’accord avec sa proposition suivante : « La laïcité ne va pas à l’encontre de la liberté de religion. Elle en fait plutôt partie intégrante. Elle en constitue une dimension essentielle. » Cela a d’importantes conséquences.

La laïcité comporte deux éléments essentiels : elle implique la séparation de l’Église et de l’État, d’une part, et la laïcisation des services publics, d’autre part. Au Québec, la séparation s’est progressivement amorcée aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles et sera confirmée dans la Loi sur la liberté de culte de 1853. La jurisprudence est claire là-dessus. Quant à la laïcisation des services publics, c’est différent, car elle s’amorce à partir de la Révolution tranquille des années 1960 et se conclut dans le domaine de l’éducation par les lois de 1999 et 2005. Ce n’est pas de l’histoire ancienne…

Pour ce qui est de la séparation de l’Église et de l’État, dans la réalité politique et sociale, elle est loin d’être aussi tranchée qu’on le dit. On trouve partout de nombreux assouplissements. Dans des États laïques comme la France, l’État est propriétaire de dizaines de cathédrales, les municipalités sont propriétaires de milliers d’églises, avec obligation constitutionnelle de les entretenir ; l’État français consacre d’énormes budgets au patrimoine religieux ; l’État finance de nombreuses écoles privées religieuses.

Dans plusieurs États européens, tous officiellement laïques, il peut y avoir de l’enseignement religieux dans l’école publique, un financement public de certains cultes (Belgique) et la présence de crucifix dans l’école publique (Italie, Bavière). Aux États-Unis, où, en vertu du First Amendment, on parle du « wall of separation », la Cour suprême autorise la prière au Congrès, dans les législatures et les conseils municipaux, permet l’installation de crèches de la nativité dans un parc municipal, de croix sur le domaine public ; le port de signes religieux est possible au Congrès et dans les législatures.

Au Québec, la séparation de l’Église et de l’État ne dispense pas l’État de devoir permettre la construction de lieux de culte ; la législation autorise le financement d’écoles privées religieuses, subventionne le patrimoine religieux, accorde aux associations religieuses des avantages fiscaux. On est loin de la laïcité stalinienne.

Si, comme le dit le professeur Pelletier, la laïcité est « un principe phare de l’identité profonde du Québec », cette profondeur est à géométrie variable ! Certes, les disciples des Lumières de l’Institut canadien et les membres du Parti patriote ont parlé de laïcité, mais le Bas-Canada et le Québec ont très longtemps baigné dans une atmosphère globale de stricte religiosité.

Aussi, cela fait sourire lorsqu’on lit, dans la Loi sur la laïcité, l’un des « considérants » solennels : « CONSIDÉRANT que la nation québécoise a des caractéristiques propres, dont […] un parcours historique spécifique l’ayant amenée à développer un attachement particulier à la laïcité de l’État. » Ce parcours est spécifiquement fort court…

Source: Une laïcité à géométrie variable

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Meggs: When it comes to immigration levels, temporary permits are the elephant in the room 

2023/08/15 Leave a comment

Good reminder of the need to manage the number of temporary residents, not just the permanent residents in the annual levels plan.

No sign yet that the government is seized with the pressures on housing, healthcare and infrastructure that result from high levels of permanent and temporary residents or an appreciation of how this issue will harm them politically and how it risks damaging the overall Canadian consensus in favour of immigration.

Anne and I often compare observations but our respective pieces were written separately and complement each other (see Griffith: Canada badly needs an immigration reset):

With pressure mounting to rethink Canada’s immigration policies, it’s no surprise to see a new minister, Marc Miller, take charge of the portfolio. Over recent months, we have seen an increasing number of articles, studies and reports warning that the rapid rise in population is stretching housing and health services and that the current immigration levels might be too high. More voices are calling for a course correction or restoring balance in Canada’s immigration policy.

The federal government may, indeed, want to propose a temporary slowdown of the pace of arrivals in response to these calls for a reset, and the new minister might be more open to this approach. However, any realignment in pace, numbers or skill levels of new arrivals will be much easier said than done. Mr. Miller can certainly level off permanent immigration targets, at least for the short term, but this would make little or no difference to the number of arrivals, since almost all people arriving from other countries now do so on temporary visas and permits.

Permanent immigration planning was relevant years ago when the number of permanent residents each year coincided relatively closely with the number of new arrivals. This was because permanent immigration applications had to be made from outside Canada. It is also important to note that people arriving with permanent status benefit from the same protections and public services as Canadian citizens from the moment they land in the country.

The bulk of people granted permanent resident status these days are already living in Canada with some sort of temporary immigration status, such as a work permit or a student visa. These are not the people driving new demand for housing or health services, because they are already here.

Meanwhile, the number of people arriving as temporary residents isn’t directly managed by the federal government – there are no targets and no ceilings. The former immigration minister Sean Fraserwas very clear that temporary immigration is based on the demand of postsecondary institutions and employers. The number of temporary work permit holders in Canada at the end of 2022 had soared to 798,100. The number of foreign students in Canada has also soared, with more than 807,260 in the country at the end of 2022.

The requirement to apply for permanent residence from outside the country was abolished several years ago. Most people with temporary study or work status (and their spouses and children) nevertheless arrive seduced by the promise of permanent residence. Multiple pathways for just that purpose have been put in place both federally and provincially.

Temporary residents do not have the security, rights or protections associated with permanent residence. They often can’t get a mortgage or a car loan because they’re in the country ostensibly on a temporary basis, even though the positions they hold are often permanent. Many are tied to their employer and therefore to the municipality where they work. The nature of their permit determines which public services are available to them.

Provincial governments will resist cutting back on the number of international students because they would have to find new ways to finance postsecondary institutions. These young people have also become essential to fill low-paid jobs in certain key sectors of the economy.

Employers have been led to believe that temporary immigration is the best and quickest solution for their job vacancies. But this is contrary to international evidence showing that countries with faster-growing populations are not seeing their job vacancy rates decrease: as immigrants spend their incomes, the pressure on demand for workers returns. Naturally, it is cheaper for employers to bring in foreign labour for low-paid, low-skilled jobs than to put in the effort and resources necessary to improve salaries, working conditions and productivity.

No realignment on immigration policy, whether it be slowing the pace of arrivals or getting back to focusing on selecting highly skilled immigrants, will have any effect if it does not include temporary immigration. Restoring balance to the immigration system will not be easy, but Mr. Miller must try.

Anne Michèle Meggs is the former director of planning and accountability at Quebec’s ministry of immigration and the author of L’immigration au Québec: Comment on peut faire mieux.

Source: When it comes to immigration levels, temporary permits are the elephant in the room

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Long way home: Blamed for affordability crisis, Liberals look to pivot on housing

2023/08/15 Leave a comment

But a real pivot has to include both immigration and housing….

Chris Burke and his fiancée have been less than a year away from buying their first home for the past three years.

Saving for a down payment was the first challenge. Now, rising interest rates have kicked home ownership down the road again, stalling the couple’s plans to get married and have children.

“Any gains we make towards purchasing a house, we’re watching the goalposts move further and further away,” the 31-year-old Ottawa resident said.

Feeling “stuck,” as Burke put it, is a sentiment shared by many young Canadians who are increasingly pessimistic about their home ownership prospects.

For the federal Liberals, the growing discontent with the state of the housing market is becoming a political threat.

“I’m a former Liberal voter,” Burke said. “I certainly wouldn’t be voting for them this time around.”

Experts say the housing crisis poses a great risk to the incumbent government in the next election if it doesn’t take drastic action soon.

“This has become probably the most important both economic and political problem facing the country right now,” said Tyler Meredith, a former head of economic strategy and planning for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“And especially given the significant emphasis the government has put on immigration and the relationship between immigration and the housing market, there is a need to do more.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has taken direct aim at the Liberals for the state of the housing market, highlighting the dramatic increases in home prices, rents and even interest rates.

According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, the national average price of a home sold was $709,000 in June 2023, up from $455,000 in Oct. 2015, when the Liberals first came to power.

And the cost of getting a mortgage has soared, following a series of aggressive interest rate increases by the Bank of Canada in response to rising inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rent prices have also skyrocketed, with some cities seeing double-digit increases over the last year.

Trudeau has tried to deflect for the housing crisis, recently saying there are limits to what the federal government can do.

“I’ll be blunt as well: housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility,” Trudeau said during a housing announcement in Hamilton on July 31.

“It’s not something we have direct carriage of. But it is something that we can and must help with.”

His remarks were quickly blasted by Poilievre, who reminded people of earlier promises Trudeau had made on housing.

“(Trudeau) held a news conference … to tell you all he’s not responsible for housing. That’s funny, because eight years ago, he promised he was gonna lower housing costs,” Poilievre said in a news conference the next day.

Most experts agree that Ottawa isn’t solely responsible for the problem. But many say the federal government could still be doing more to alleviate the shortage of housing at the root of the affordability crunch.

The Canada Mortgage Housing Corp., the national housing agency, warned last year that the country needs to build 5.8 million homes by 2030 to restore affordability.

If the current pace of building continues, then only 2.3 million homes will have been added to the housing stock by then.

There are several things experts say the federal government could be doing, such as better calibrating its immigration policy with housing and reforming tax laws to incentivize rental developments. It could also push local governments to get housing built faster.

The federal government has been hearing from stakeholders and housing experts on these potential solutions, as rumblings grow about a focus on housing in the coming fall economic statement and next year’s budget.

A senior government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss matters not yet made public, says the Liberals plan to take steps over the next year to get other levels of government, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector to build more homes.

Trudeau’s recent cabinet shuffle might be an early sign that the federal government plans to prioritize housing. The prime minister appointed one of the stronger communicators and a rising star on the Liberal bench, Sean Fraser, to take on housing and infrastructure as one, amalgamated file.

“The prime minister said something to the effect of, ‘I’ve got a big job for you to do,'” Fraser said in an interview.

Fraser said he hopes to help restore a housing market closer to the one he grew up with in small-town Nova Scotia: one where having a job was enough to buy a home.

“It might take a bit of time for us to solve the housing challenges that are before us,” he said. “But man, is it a challenge we’re solving.”

That challenge includes overcoming jurisdictional issues. Many of the policy levers that could help spur more housing development are at the provincial and municipal levels of government.

Urban planning, zoning laws and red tape are the purview of local governments, which have decision-making powers that can help or hinder housing development.

Ben Dachis, associate vice-president of public affairs at the C.D. Howe Institute, says the predicament the Liberals find themselves in speaks to the “insidious nature of consistent federal overreach.”

“The cautionary tale is that the federal government needs to stick with jurisdiction,” Dachis said.

But housing expert Carolyn Whitzman has a different take. The University of Ottawa adjunct professor says the federal government can’t turn its back on Canadians in the middle a crisis.

“The federal government: it’s where the buck stops,” Whitzman said.

“If housing and climate change are the crises that they’re certainly treated (as), the federal government is going to have to put on its big kid pants and actually deal with it.”

Source: Long way home: Blamed for affordability crisis, Liberals look to pivot on housing

Related article: Canada ‘absolutely’ can’t build more houses without more immigrants, minister says

Canada’s housing crisis “absolutely cannot” be solved without the aid of new immigrants who bring their skills here, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters on Friday

“The federal government is making housing more affordable and bringing in the skilled workers required to build more homes,” Miller said in Montreal.

“Without those skilled workers coming from outside Canada, we absolutely cannot build the homes and meet the demand that exists currently today.”

Miller was asked by reporters if he was considering slashing Canada’s immigration targets, which are currently at historic highs, in response to a recent Bank of Canada report that new immigrants are adding to housing demand.

The minister said he was not.

“People coming to this country are resourceful. When they bring capital, they are able to acquire houses,” he said.

“If people are asking us to slash, what does that mean? Does that mean slashing the skilled workers that we need to actually build those houses? Slash family reunification, which can be devastating for the mental health and well-being of the families that are already here?”

Canada aims to welcome 451,000 new immigrants in 2024.

By 2025, the number is expected to go up to 500,000 new immigrants in one year.

Miller said around 60 per cent of new immigrants to Canada are economic migrants, many of whom are the kind of skilled workers needed to build more housing. Family reunification visas account for around 20 per cent of those migrating. The rest, he said, are refugees and asylum seekers.

“We have a humanitarian duty towards people that are fleeing war and persecution,” Miller said.

Last week, a spokesperson from Miller’s office told Global News that fulfilling Canada’s labour shortages is one of his key priorities, and a key goal of the government’s immigration targets.

“Strategies like Express Entry, and the historic Immigration Levels Plan, which is largely made up of economic migrants, are a great asset to our nation as they will directly help combat the ongoing labour shortage. This is especially true when it comes to the housing sector,” Bahoz Dara Aziz, press secretary to the immigration minister, told Global News.

“With provinces like Ontario needing 100,000 workers to meet their housing demands, it is clear that immigration will play a strong role in creating more homes for Canadians.”

The federal government increased its immigration targets in November 2022, and Miller has suggested those targets may need to keep rising.

The construction industry is short tens of thousands of workers, and experts say a coming wave of retirements could make the problem worse.

Meanwhile, Canada is millions of homes behind what’s needed to reach housing affordability this decade.

The job vacancy rate in construction is at a record high with around 80,000 vacancies in the industry,  CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal said in a recent note.

Those vacancies, which push up building costs and impede productivity, come at a time when the residential construction industry is under pressure to meet the demands of a growing population.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. forecasts a need for 3.5 million more homes by 2030 than the country is currently on track to build.

The number of new homes built, however, has been in decline, from just over 271,000 in 2021 to 260,000 in 2022. And in May this year, the annual pace of housing starts dropped 23 per cent month over month, leading the CMHC’s chief economist to predict that just 210,000 to 220,000 new homes will be built by the end of the year.

Last week, the federal government launched a separate stream of entry for newcomers with work experience in skilled trades.

“It’s absolutely critical to address the shortage of skilled trades workers in our country, and part of the solution is helping the construction sector find and maintain the workers it needs,” Miller said in a statement, making his first major announcement as Canada’s new immigration minister.

“This round of category-based selection recognizes these skilled trades workers as essential, and I look forward to welcoming more of these talented individuals to Canada.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said that by welcoming people in skilled trades such as carpentry, plumbing and welding, Canada can help its construction sector attract skilled workers.

But there remain questions about how the government can ensure those bringing the skill set to work in construction actually end up working in the sector and are able to navigate the certifications processes across the country.

Source: Canada ‘absolutely’ can’t build more houses without more immigrants, minister says

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Korea to prioritize Korean language ability as part of immigration reform

2023/08/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

As Korea prepares to welcome more foreign workers through its reformed immigration policy, greater emphasis will be placed on an immigrant’s proficiency in the Korean language compared to other skills.

The Ministry of Justice told The Korea Times that fluency in Korean would play a significant role in the issuance of E-7-4 visas. These visas, which grant permanent stay in Korea with an initial three-year period and unlimited renewals, are given to individuals who meet specific criteria including a minimum of four years of work.

The Ministry stated that mastering the Korean language is fundamental for immigrants to assimilate into Korean society, paralleling the approach of other countries. To encourage this, higher points will be awarded to those with exceptional language skills who seek to switch to E-7-4 visas.

This stance aligns with the direction set by Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon, who emphasized the primacy of language ability over even technical skills like welding. He emphasized that individuals proficient in Korean would receive substantial incentives. Han Dong-hoon also emphasized the urgency of immigration reform to embrace skilled foreign workers as a critical priority for Korea. Despite government efforts, the nation’s birthrate continues to decline dramatically, prompting a need for harmonious coexistence with foreign labor.

Han Dong-hoon stressed that Korea’s future hinges on the development of a well-structured immigration system and cautioned against hasty implementation to prevent severe political divisions. He cited examples from various other countries to highlight the importance of careful planning.

Recent data from Statistics Korea paints a concerning picture as only 18,988 births were recorded in May, marking a 5.3 percent decrease compared to the previous year. This consistent decline over 90 consecutive months poses a significant demographic challenge to the nation’s economy and long-term prospects.

Source: Korea to prioritize Korean language ability as part of immigration …

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Months after closure of Quebec’s Roxham Road, more asylum seekers arriving by air

2023/08/15 Leave a comment

Well, of course they are. But a more regular pathway than Roxham Road and one that reflects increased air travel and visas. The issue, as always, remains hearing and processing times and the extensive appeal processes in case asylum not granted. And to date, fears about the closing of irregular points of arrivals have not been realized:

The closure of a rural southern Quebec road used by thousands of asylum seekers to enter Canada from the United States hasn’t stopped would-be refugees from arriving, federal data shows.

The number of people claiming asylum in Canada dropped sharply after the end of March, when the government negotiated a deal with the United States to turn away asylum seekers at unofficial border crossings like Quebec’s Roxham Road. However, the numbers have been climbing back up in recent months, propelled by an increase in arrivals at Ontario and Quebec airports.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden announced in March that they were closing a long-standing loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement, under which asylum seekers have to apply for refugee status in the first of the two countries they enter. Now the deal applies along the entire shared border, rather than just at official ports of entry — a situation that had led to thousands of people crossing at Roxham Road each month to ensure their claims would be heard in Canada.

In June, RCMP across the country intercepted just 36 people between official border points, compared with 4,994 in January. However, the Canada Border Services Agency processed 4,350 claims in June at airports — almost all of them in Quebec and Ontario — compared to 1,370 in January and 1,360 in June 2022.

While the issue may have faded from the political spotlight since Roxham Road was closed, the head of one group that helps refugees in Montreal says his organization is as busy as ever.

“The numbers that we’re experiencing now are actually higher than we’ve had in March and January and February,” said Abdulla Daoud, executive director of Montreal-based The Refugee Centre. He said his organization gets between 100 and 150 people a day seeking legal services and other help with their claims.

Daoud believes the increase in numbers at airports is due to the “current global state of affairs” that has resulted in what the United Nations Refugee Agency has called the greatest number of displaced people on record — some 110 million.

“This is our global reality and this is how the world is working today,” he said. “We have to start investing in infrastructure to deal with the numbers that we’re getting, because there is no real deterrent that can be applied to stop individuals from coming in.”

Stéphanie Valois, the co-president of Quebec’s immigration lawyers’ association, sees another reason for the increase in airport arrivals. She said the federal government in recent months has “massively” increased its processing of visitor visas in order to address a backlog, resulting in more arrivals and therefore more claims.

In her opinion, the rise in airport arrivals isn’t linked to the closure of Roxham Road because “the asylum seekers coming in at the airport come from different places.” She said people who entered at Roxham Road were generally from countries where it was difficult to get a visitor visa, such as Haiti, Turkey, Colombia and Venezuela. Those arriving at airports are arriving with visas, often from African countries or India, she said.

However, she agrees with Daoud that in the long run, the number of asylum seekers will rise, as more people figure out ways to reach Canada in their quest for safety.

The Canadian Press asked Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for information about changes to its visa processing but did not receive a response by publication time.

Both Daoud and Valois say they are worried about the people who are no longer able to use Roxham Road to get to Canada. Valois noted that the majority of asylum claims in Canada are ultimately accepted, which proves “these aren’t people who come here for a better life,” she said. “They come to escape persecution.”

Both also worry that those who still choose to make the journey will find themselves in unsafe situations, and will resort increasingly to smugglers to get them across the border.

Daoud says his organization has already been seeing more and more people who sneak across the border and hide from authorities for two weeks before making a claim. While the Safe Third Country Agreement now applies to people that cross between ports of entry, it doesn’t apply to those who have already been in the country for at least 14 days.

“We’ve had individuals who are just hiding in random areas, not even in shelters,” Daoud said.

While they won’t share data for “logistical” reasons, the RCMP say there has been an increase in covert border crossings in both the northbound and southbound directions since the new system has been put into place.

“Across the Quebec-U.S. border, there isn’t a day or a night without a police interception of some migrants (either going north or south),” Sgt. Charles Poirier wrote in an email. “For this reason, we’ve adapted our patrols, and we are now pursuing investigations into some smuggling networks.”

He said a recent case in which a woman gave birth in the woods near Potton, Que., after her family became stranded highlights “the new reality that we are now faced with.”

Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia of United States Border Patrol wrote this week that agents patrolling a sector of the border that includes Vermont, New Hampshire and eastern New York apprehended more than 5,400 subjects in just over 10 months — more than in the last nine years combined.

Source: Months after closure of Quebec’s Roxham Road, more asylum seekers arriving by air

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Immigration pilot pays off for Thunder Bay and newcomers: Study

2023/08/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP) is estimated to have greatly benefitted Thunder Bay’s economy and newcomers to Canada and the northwestern Ontario city in delivering 321 jobs within a year of being activated, according to a research paper from the Northern Policy Institute.

The paper’s author, Bryanne de Castro Rocha, found that after one year, the RNIP program in the City of Thunder Bay is estimated to have generated a total of $11.6 million in wages in the local economy and offered 229 jobs to its applicants, which in turn generated an additional 92 jobs in the local economy for a total of 321 jobs after one year.

The federal Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot does not directly create jobs, but it does provide an immigration pathway to aid employers in attracting talent to fill vacant positions.

It was created to better distribute and direct immigrants to opportunity beyond the major cities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Eleven rural and northern communities participated including the City of Thunder Bay.

RNIP is mutually beneficial program by giving smaller communities the opportunity to select which workers have the most desired skills by their local industries and are the most likely to settle and stay in that northern or rural community in the long term.

Thunder Bay’s pilot was designed for an initial run from November 2019 through December 2022. It’s since been extended until August 2024.

And the pilot boundaries were expanded last September beyond the Thunder Bay area to take a greater swath of northwestern Ontario including the Rainy River district communities Atikokan, Fort Frances and Emo, Dryden, Sioux Lookout and up along the north shore of Lake Superior and Lake Nipigon, taking in Greenstone, Marathon, Manitouwadge, Nipigon, Schreiber, Terrace Bay, the Township of Red Rock and Ignace.

This is all good, according to the paper, as immigrants positively contribute to the local economy. They pay taxes that fund public services, spend their money on “goods, housing and transportation,” stimulating the economy, and allow employers to find qualified workers for their businesses,

All this creates a ripple effect in multiple other economic factors, such as the income and spending of other parties.

Source: Immigration pilot pays off for Thunder Bay and newcomers: Study

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Sun editorial: High immigration fuels housing shortage

2023/08/14 Leave a comment

As it appears from Minister Miller’s initial public comments that the government has no intention to revise or freeze current and planned levels, they risk being labelled, correctly, as being pro-immigration ideologues and oblivious to reality.
There is enough concern about the impact of permanent and temporary migration across most of the political spectrum that this presents a major political risk to the Liberals in 2025.
The weakness, or course, is that all the provinces want more immigration save for Quebec and are thus equally complicit to the Liberal government: 
Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller has responded to repeated economic warnings the Trudeau government’s high-intake immigration policies are contributing to Canada’s housing shortage with a turn of phrase that doesn’t address the problem.
He said Friday we need more immigrants to build more housing.

“Without those skilled workers coming from outside Canada, we absolutely cannot build the homes and meet the demand that exists currently today,” Miller said, as reported by Global News.

But if the federal government’s plan to bring in almost 1.5 million immigrants to Canada between now and 2025 is already contributing to the housing shortage and raising the cost of housing, how will bringing in more immigrants solve it?

As TD Bank warned recently: “Continuing with a high-growth immigration strategy could widen the housing shortfall by about a half-million units within just two years. Recent government policies to accelerate construction are unlikely to offer a stop-gap due to the short time period and the natural lags in adjusting supply.”

The National Bank of Canada cautioned: “The federal government’s decision to open the immigration floodgates during the most aggressive monetary tightening cycle in a generation has created a record imbalance between housing and demand … As housing affordability pressures continue to mount across the country, we believe Ottawa should consider revising its immigration targets to allow supply to catch up with demand.”

BMO (Bank of Montreal) reported “heightened immigration flows designed to ease labour supply pressure immediately add to the housing demand they are trying to meet … The infrastructure in place and the industry’s ability to build clearly can’t support unchecked levels of demand, so the affordability conundrum continues.”

It’s true there is a shortage of workers in the construction industry and Miller recently announced a plan to encourage skilled trade workers to immigrate to Canada, but the federal government can’t guarantee how many immigrants will end up in the construction trades.

Given the fact most immigrants end up in cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, the feds should be consulting with provincial and municipal governments about the number of immigrants they can reasonably absorb.

This as opposed to obsessing about reaching a target of almost 1.5 million immigrants by 2025.

Source: EDITORIAL: High immigration fuels housing shortage

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Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires

2023/08/14 Leave a comment

More on the far right ecosystem in the USA:

In 1923, Princeton University Press published “A Study of American Intelligence” by Carl Campbell Brigham, a eugenicist and professor of psychology at the university.

Brigham, like many men of his class and station at the time, believed in race hierarchy — of a natural order of humanity, with some groups at the top and others at the bottom. He was part of a national effort, among elites and ordinary citizens alike, to improve the “racial fitness” of the American people by restricting immigration and removing the undesirable through sterilization.

As one like-minded eugenicist, Robert M. Yerkes, wrote in his foreword to Brigham’s book, “The author presents not theories or opinions but facts. It behooves us to consider their reliability and their meaning, for no one of us as a citizen can afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relations of immigration to national progress and welfare.”

As a scientist, Brigham would bring the laws of heredity and the study of intelligence to bear on the question of race hierarchy. He would purport to show, with scientific precision, the inherent superiority of so-called Nordic Americans above all others.

“His four major groups consisted of native-born whites, total whites, foreign-born whites, and Negroes,” explains the historian Nell Irvin Painter in “The History of White People.” “Within these groups, Brigham differentiated between the above-average foreigners and the below-average foreigners. Turks and Greeks just barely improved on the foreign-born average, while men from Russia, Italy, and Poland ranked at the bottom with the ‘Negro draft.’ Northwestern Europeans topped the chart.”

It was the traditional Anglo-American race hierarchy, illustrated with the charts, graphs and calculations that elevated the claim from everyday, casual prejudice to an objective account of society. And it served its intended purpose: to naturalize inequality of status and resources in an era defined by its yawning gaps between haves and have-nots.

It should come as no surprise to learn, as Adam Cohen notes in “Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck,” that “John D. Rockefeller Jr., the world’s wealthiest man, funded scientific research into how what he called the ‘defective human’ could be bred out of the population.” Or that, as Edwin Black explains in “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race,” eugenicists drew from “almost unlimited corporate philanthropy to establish the biological rationales for persecution” of the so-called unfit.

I mention all of this as context for Richard Hanania, a rising star among conservative writers and intellectuals. For years before appearing in the pages of newspapers and publications like this one, Hanania wrote articles for white supremacist publications under a pseudonym. According to a recent investigation by Christopher Mathias of The Huffington Post:

[Hanania] expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing.” And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.

Hanania no longer writes for those publications. And though he may claim otherwise, it doesn’t appear that his views have changed much. He still makes explicitly racist statements and arguments, now under his own name. “I don’t have much hope that we’ll solve crime in any meaningful way,” he wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter earlier this year. “It would require a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people. Blacks won’t appreciate it, whites don’t have the stomach for it.” Responding to the killing of a homeless Black man on the New York City subway, Hanania wrote, “These people are animals, whether they’re harassing people in subways or walking around in suits.”

Hanania sees his claims as uncomfortable truths. “The reason I’m the target of a cancellation effort is because left-wing journalists dislike anyone acknowledging statistical differences between races,” he recently wrote. But his supposedly transgressive views are little more than the warmed-over dogmas of the long-dead ideologues who believed in the scientific truth of race hierarchy. Of course, those men, their peers and their followers lost their appetite for that talk in the wake of the Holocaust, when the world got a firsthand look at the catastrophic consequences of state-sponsored racism, eugenicism and antisemitism.

But more interesting than either Hanania — whose recent notoriety has not lifted him too far from his previous obscurity — or his rancid views are his backers. According to Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist, Hanania’s organization, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, has received at least $700,000 in support through anonymous donations. He is also a visiting scholar at the Salem Center at the University of Texas at Austin — funded by Harlan Crow.

A whole coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires have lent their time and attention to Hanania, as well as elevated his work. Marc Andreessen, a powerful venture capitalist, appeared on his podcast. David Sacks, a close associate of Elon Musk, wrote a glowing endorsement of Hanania’s forthcoming book. So did Peter Thiel, the billionaire supporter of right-wing causes and organizations. “D.E.I. will never d-i-e from words alone,” wrote Thiel. “Hanania shows we need the sticks and stones of government violence to exorcise the diversity demon.” Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, also praised the book as a “devastating kill shot to the intellectual foundations of identity politics in America.”

The question to ask here — the question that matters — is why an otherwise obscure racist has the ear and support of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley? What purpose, to a billionaire venture capitalist, do Hanania’s ideas serve?

Look back to our history and the answer is straightforward. Just as in the 1920s (and before), the idea of race hierarchy works to naturalize the broad spectrum of inequalities, and capitalist inequality in particular.

If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.

If some groups — and really, if some individuals — are simply meant to be at the top, then there are no questions to ask about their wealth, status and power. And as my friend John Ganz notes in his newsletter, the idea of race hierarchy “creates the illusion of cross-class solidarity between these masters of infinite wealth and their propagandist and supporter class: ‘We are of the same special breed, you and I.’” Relations of domination between groups are reproduced as relations of domination between individuals.

This, in fact, has been the traditional role of supremacist ideologies in the United States — to occlude class relations and convert anxiety over survival into the jealous protection of status. The purveyors of supremacist ideologies have worked in concrete ways to bound the two things, survival and status, together; to create the illusion that the security, even prosperity, of one group rests on the exclusion of another. (The history of segregated housing in this country is testament enough to the success of that ideological project.) With enough time to grow and take root, these ideologies branch out with a life and logic of their own, reproduced by people who believe they have something new, novel and forbidden.

Why are billionaires backing an unremarkable racist as he tries to find a place in polite society? Because his interest in a hierarchical society built on racism serves their interest in a hierarchical society built on class — and ruled by capital.

It’s the same, then, as it ever was.

Source: Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Polish government plans referendum asking if voters want ‘thousands of illegal immigrants’

2023/08/14 Leave a comment

Far from a neutral way to pose a question….:

Poland’s ruling party wants to ask voters in a referendum whether they support accepting “thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa” as part of a European Union relocation plan, the prime minister said Sunday, as his conservative party seeks to hold onto power in an October parliamentary election.

Mateusz Morawiecki announced the referendum question in a new video published on social media. It indicated that his party, Law and Justice, is seeking to use migration in its election campaign, a tactic that helped it take power in 2015.

Poland is hosting more than a million Ukrainian refugees, who are primarily white and Christian, but officials have long made clear that they consider Muslims and others from different cultures to be a threat to the nation’s cultural identity and security.

EU interior ministers in June endorsed a plan to share out responsibility for migrants entering Europe without authorization, the root of one of the bloc’s longest-running political crises.

The Polish government wants to hold the referendum alongside the parliamentary election, scheduled for Oct. 15. Morawiecki said that the question would say: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”

The video announcing the question includes scenes of burning cars and other street violence in Western Europe. A Black man licks a huge knife in apparent anticipation of committing a crime. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski then says: “Do you want this to happen in Poland as well? Do you want to cease being masters of your own country?”

Leaders have announced two other questions in recent days. One will ask voters for their views on privatizing state-owned enterprises and the other will ask if they support raising the retirement age, which Law and Justice lowered to 60 for women and 65 for men.

The questions are set up to depict the opposition party, Civic Platform, as a threat to the interests of Poles. The pro-business and pro-EU party, which governed from 2007 to 2015, raised the retirement age during its time in power, favored some privatization and signaled a willingness to accept a few thousand refugees before it lost power.

The video takes aim directly at Civic Platform leader Donald Tusk, a former president of the European Council. “Tusk is the greatest threat to our security, he is the greatest threat to Poland’s security,” Morawiecki says. “Let’s not let Tusk — as an envoy of the Brussels elites — demolish security in Poland.”

Europe’s asylum system collapsed eight years ago after well over a million people entered the bloc — most of them fleeing conflict in Syria — and overwhelmed reception capacities in Greece and Italy, in the process sparking one of the EU’s biggest political crises.

The 27 EU nations have bickered ever since over which countries should take responsibility for people arriving without authorization, and whether other members should be obliged to help them cope.

Initially Poland was neither an entry country nor a destination country for migrants and refugees. It became a front-line state two years ago when migrants began crossing from Belarus, something European authorities view as an effort by the Russian ally to generate turmoil in Poland and other European countries.

Poland responded by building a large wall on its border. It has recently increased its military presence on the border fearing an uptick in migration and other possible instability.

As well as disagreements over migration, Law and Justice has long been in conflict with the EU over a perception by the bloc that the Warsaw government has been eroding democratic norms.

Source: Polish government plans referendum asking if voters want ‘thousands of illegal immigrants’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Concrete actions must accompany diverse cabinet, Canada Research Chair says

2023/08/14 Leave a comment

Hard not to agree with Erin Tolley but some perspective on what the government haas done – increased diversity in GiC, judicial, senate appointments, improved representation and data on public service diversity, refunding of the multiculturalism program and explicit anti-racism initiatives, special attention to Black Canadians along with the various historical recognition initiatives – would be helpful. Further action of course possible:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau moved last month to introduce more diversity into his cabinet but some political experts said the additions won’t have much effect unless they go beyond surface-level representation.

Trudeau added seven new faces to his governing team on July 26 including Mississauga MP Rechie Valdez, the first Filipina Canadian woman MP, and Toronto MP Gary Anandasangaree, who is the first Sri Lankan Tamil to serve in cabinet.

Trudeau said in July that the new cabinet is a reflection of Canada’s diversity and would bring new voices, skills and experiences to the table.

Many saw the changes as part of an effort by the Liberals to shore up support in tight ridings and among specific ethnic communities.

But Erin Tolley, the Canada Research Chair on gender, race and inclusive politics at Carleton University in Ottawa, said a seat at the table is only one part of true representation – both for the ministers themselves and for the people they represent.

“I think in these particular cases, appointing somebody from those communities does act as a signal that the Liberals are listening, that they value input from that community,” said Tolley.

At the same time, it’s reductive to speak of changes to cabinet in terms of racial impact, she said. Focusing solely on race instead of policy is a disservice to both diaspora communities and the ministers themselves because it assumes diaspora communities vote primarily on the basis of the racial background, she said.

There’s little evidence to suggest voters can be motivated solely on racial grounds, said Tolley, which means a more diverse cabinet isn’t likely to dramatically shift voting behaviour among the people they represent come election time.

“You can’t simply put diverse faces around a table without also changing the way you do policy and the kinds of policy choices you’re making,” said Tolley.

Without this, communities could shift their alliances if they feel their support is being taken advantage of and if they’re not seeing responsiveness from a government, she said.

Sabreena Delhon, executive director of the Samara Centre for Democracy, said politicians can also feel taken advantage of if they don’t receive the supports they need in their new roles.

“If you’re going to have someone in a space where they have traditionally been under-represented or have had limited decision-making power, you need to think about what it will take to retain them,” Delhon said. “And that relates to creating working conditions that are sustainable and supportive.”

Delhon said Samara’s podcast, “Humans of the House”, which interviews former members of Parliament about their experiences in politics, has helped showcasewhat it means to work on the Hill. The candid conversations have talked about mental health struggles, the gruelling schedules and the steep learning curve MPs face when they receive a promotion.

When diverse MPs are given those promotions, there needs to be mechanisms in place to support their success and retention in the roles, said Delhon.

“If we don’t find ways for the House of Commons and the broader workplace culture of politics in Canada to hold on to the best and brightest problem solvers, then the leaders that we need will stop stepping forward altogether.”

And, she added, it’s not uncommon for racialized politicians to be the subject to threats online which add more stress and mental health struggles to their long list of challenges.

Samara analyzed more than 2.5-million posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, directed toward candidates in the 2021 federal election. About 20 per cent of those tweets were “toxic or abusive,” Delhon said, including sexually explicit content and attacks on their identities.

Cabinet shuffle day can be “an exciting day,” said Delhon, “but it’s important to understand how challenging the path to that position might have been for some,” especially those who are racialized.

When Charmaine Williams, a member of provincial parliament in Ontario, was named to Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet last year she became the first Black person in cabinet for the conservatives in that province.

She said she’s felt supported “every step of the way,” both from her colleagues and her constituents – “all those who’ve been impacted by the various barriers that so many Canadians (and) Ontarians face.”

This makes the feelings of support and inclusion even stronger, she said, because she knows folks “understand what it’s like to be the first.”

Williams was speaking in Ottawa at the end of a summit of the Canadian Congress of Black Parliamentarians. She said collaborating with other Black politicians reminds her that even though they may be the only ones in the room, you’re still there with the mandate to fight for all Canadians.

“It’s such a great feeling,” she said.

Source: Concrete actions must accompany diverse cabinet, Canada Research Chair says

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , ,

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