Gee: Let’s not rename Dundas Street after all

2023/08/09 Leave a comment

Yep. Waste of $$ with no material effect on removing barriers or improving inclusion:

“The City of Toronto is broke,” its new mayor, Olivia Chow, said last month, turning her pocket inside out theatrically to show there was nothing in it.

She is not far off. City hall is a staggering $1.5-billion short of what it needs to keep the town running for the next two years. Naturally, it is looking around for ways to save money. One obvious way presents itself. It could reverse a costly and misguided decision to rename a major street.

Dundas Street spans the city core, linking the east and west ends. It crosses the Don Valley, passes the Eaton Centre and travels through Chinatown, extending all the way into the suburban city of Mississauga.

It is one of the city’s oldest and best-known thoroughfares. The first governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, started building it in the late 18th century for military purposes. He named the road after the man who appointed him, Henry Dundas, a powerful Scottish politician who held leading posts in the British government.

Until recently, most Torontonians had no idea who Dundas even was. But during the global reckoning with racism that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, a petition circulated calling for Dundas Street to be renamed. Advocates said Dundas was instrumental in delaying Great Britain’s decision to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Two years ago, city council voted 17-7 to strip his name not only from the street but from other city assets such as Yonge-Dundas Square.

Now is a good time to revisit the decision. If Toronto wants to acknowledge the sins of the past, there are better ways than toppling statues and erasing names. One is to teach young people about shameful episodes such as the establishment of residential schools. Another is to honour pioneers in the fields of racial and social justice by naming streets, schools or parks after them. Yet another is to put up educational plaques acknowledging the misdeeds of the city’s early leaders.

Dundas, who never so much as visited Toronto, is not one of those. The case against him was murky to begin with. His critics say that in 1792 he delayed the abolition of the slave trade by proposing a parliamentary amendment that added the word “gradually” to a motion saying it should be ended.

His defenders say that was merely a tactical move to get an abolition bill of some kind through the House of Commons and smooth the path for a final decision to end the trade. The fact that the House of Lords was opposed to abolition and that Britain was fixated on its war with revolutionary France were much bigger factors in the delay.

They also point out that, earlier in his career, when he was Lord Advocate of Scotland, Dundas helped argue the case of Joseph Knight, who fought in court for his freedom from the plantation owner who had brought him to Scotland from Jamaica.

If Toronto erases a historic street name on the basis of such mixed evidence, then it is open season. Its downtown is positively littered with names from its past as a distant outpost of the British Empire. City staff identified about 60 streets named after figures “that are no longer considered to be reflective of the city’s contemporary values,” among them “at least 12 streets named after slave owners.”

A city report in 2021 said erasing Dundas’s name alone would mean, among many other things, replacing 730 street signs, changing 129 signs and 35 info pillars in the city’s wayfinding system and renaming three parks and two subway stations.

That is not to mention the hassle for the 97,000 residents and 4,500 businesses on the street. Sixty of those businesses have Dundas in their names.

The latest estimate of the cost is $8.6-million, no trifle at a time when the city is striving to find the money for things such as housing the homeless. Veteran city councillor Shelley Carroll told a local radio station that, simply put, “we don’t have the money to do it right now,” and she is one of those who voted for the change two years back.

Yet Ms. Chow – she of the empty pocket – is saying she wants to push ahead. She should think again.

Source: Let’s not rename Dundas Street after all

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Canada’s visa officers abroad to get anti-racism training amid allegations of discrimination

2023/08/09 Leave a comment

Look forward to seeing evaluations and whether or not a change in the public service employee survey occurs. Interesting, but not surprising, that Conservative immigration critic raised the issue as part of the apparent overall strategy of focussing on the administration of the immigration program:

Staff working in Canada’s visa posts abroad are to be given anti-racism training amid concerns that some local employees hired by the federal government are discriminating against Black people and members of other minorities and religious groups applying to come to this country

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says staff processing visa applications in embassies and high commissions around the world will need to take anti-racism and diversity courses, as members of Parliament continue to raise the alarm that local employees’ personal prejudices may be influencing Canadian visa decisions.

As part of an initiative unfolding globally, IRCC told The Globe and Mail that in April this year it started requiring its employees in Canada’s High Commission in South Africa – including local staff employed to process Canadian visa and permanent residence applications – to take anti-racism and diversity training.

MPs have highlighted complaints from immigration consultants and applicants that South African IRCC employees processing visas in Pretoria may be discriminating against non-white applicants who want to visit and live in Canada.

One Canadian immigration consultant with clients living in South Africa told The Globe that in their experience, Black applicants – particularly Black women – faced higher refusal rates, and more questions and obstacles and delays than white clients. The Globe is not identifying the individual because they feared it would lead to their clients being discriminated against.

They said white South African staff in Canada’s Pretoria visa office tended to be quick to approve applications from white people wanting to come to Canada and often gave them a chance to correct files with errors in them. He said files of his Black applicants with any mistakes tended to face higher rates of rejection.

The consultant said applications they had made on behalf of non-white clients had a 50/50 chance of approval, with local staff looking for any reason to refuse them.

Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec said local prejudices were not just a problem in sub-Saharan Africa but in locally staffed visa sections of embassies in Turkey and the Middle East.

He said Ottawa should consider sending Canadian staff on rotation to work in visa posts abroad to replace local staff, or send the completed digital applications to Canada for final decisions to ensure fairness.

Canadian visa offices based in embassies and high commissions abroad run by the Immigration Department (IRCC), employ both Canadian and local staff. Canadian immigration officials oversee local employees and decision-making, but day-to-day processing of applications for those wanting to come to Canada is often done by staff from the country where the visa office is based.

Mr. Kmiec said he had seen cases from Turkey and the Middle East of minorities, including Kurds, Armenians, Chaldean Christians, Druze and Zoroastrians, facing steep refusal rates and a higher bar than other applicants.

“I have heard stories upon stories from people being denied visa applications – some of them are mortifying stories of people being denied visa applications where it was very evident they should get them,” he said. “Some of the rejections were very quick, like they barely had time to consider the applications. The department has a problem with racism both on the staff level and towards applicants as well.”

The Canadian immigration consultant also gave examples of non-white clients living in South Africa, but originating from other countries, who faced obstacles in Pretoria – including highly qualified professionals with jobs in Canada.

The consultant believed Canada had delegated visa decision-making authority to local white South Africans who had been in the visa section for too long. They said only Canadians should be signing off on visas in Pretoria.

Toronto MP Kevin Vuong, who has been highlighting immigration issues including homeless asylum seekers camping on the street in his constituency, has raised the issue of South Africa’s visa section three times in Parliament, and says he plans to continue pursuing it.

He said that among the non-white applicants who faced holdups by local staff in Pretoria was a surgeon with a job in Canada who had been vetted and approved by a Canadian health authority.

“This is unconscionable. Canadians are proud of our history of helping to end apartheid, we must ensure we live up to that legacy and our aspiration to be a truly inclusive country,” he said.

The House of Commons immigration committee highlighted examples of unfairness in immigration decisions in a report last year. In its response earlier this year, the IRCC said it needs to address “embedded systemic racism and other inequities within the Canadian immigration system.” It said its anti-racism strategy addresses unconscious bias and discrimination in decision making.

“The department agrees in principle that concrete steps need to be undertaken to increase diversity amongst locally engaged staff,” the IRCC response said.

The IRCC told The Globe in a statement that it upholds the “same standards and values of anti-racism, whether we are Canadians or locally hired staff” and anti-racism (AR) and diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) training was held in Pretoria in April, 2023 “as part of IRCC’s anti-racism commitments.”

“As part of our anti-racism work, we also identify and address any sources of bias that might create barriers or unfairness in our procedures and processes,” it said, adding: “All overseas offices will be engaging in AR and DEI training.”

Source: Canada’s visa officers abroad to get anti-racism training amid allegations of discrimination

Filed under Immigration

Myles: Le débat reste à faire

2023/08/08 Leave a comment

Good column noting the need for a discussion on immigration levels and their impact on housing etc. And that it is encouraging that this debate is possible without falling into xenophobic tropes:

D’abord confinée aux marges du débat politique, la décision unilatérale du gouvernement Trudeau d’accueillir 500 000 immigrants par année commence enfin à soulever des questions pressantes.

Depuis quelques semaines, les médias du Canada anglais se questionnent sur les capacités d’accueil du Canada. C’est tout un contraste avec la situation qui prévalait l’automne dernier, lorsque le premier ministre, Justin Trudeau, a annoncé son intention d’ouvrir les vannes à l’immigration à compter de 2025. Les premiers ministres des provinces, préoccupés par le vieillissement de la population et la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre, n’avaient rien trouvé à redire. Seul le premier ministre du Québec, François Legault, s’était inscrit en faux contre cette politique fédérale qui aurait mérité un débat public beaucoup plus exhaustif compte tenu de son ampleur.

Dans un entretien à La Presse, le chef du Bloc québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, a pris un malin plaisir à souligner ce revirement. En mai, le Bloc a présenté une motion critique des cibles en raison de leur impact sur le poids du français, le logement et les services publics déjà exsangues. Malgré l’appui des conservateurs, la motion a été rejetée sans ménagement par le couple libéral-néodémocrate. « Ce débat en soi est une excellente nouvelle. Jusqu’à tout récemment, c’était facile. On disait que les Québécois étaient des racistes, contre l’immigration, et que le Canada était un gentil pays d’accueil multiculturaliste. C’était simple de même », a ironisé M. Blanchet.

Mais voilà que la coupe est pleine avant même d’avoir enclenché la marche vers l’accueil d’un demi-million d’immigrants par année. La crise du logement, largement documentée dans Le Devoir, s’empare de toutes les grandes villes et même des villes intermédiaires du pays. À Toronto, la nouvelle mairesse, Olivia Chow, a lancé un cri d’alarme sitôt entrée en fonction. Il n’y a plus de place pour loger les migrants, à telle enseigne qu’ils occupent près du tiers des lits dans les refuges pour sans-abri.

La pénurie de logements est sans contredit le principal écueil de la politique fédérale, mais il y en a d’autres. Dans un rapport récent, la Banque TD prédit que la forte hausse de l’immigration entraînera un manque à gagner de 500 000 logements dès 2025, en plus d’exercer une pression sur les taux d’intérêt, la prestation des services publics et les infrastructures. Le Canada se classe au 31e rang sur 34 pour le nombre de lits d’hôpital par habitant en soins de courte durée. Rien ne laisse présager qu’une amélioration du bilan est à l’horizon.

Voilà donc une occasion inespérée de débattre des capacités d’accueil du Canada sans se faire taxer de sombres desseins ou de xénophobie rampante. Ce pays, de même que le Québec, est promis à des défis considérables. Au Canada, près de 19,5 % de la population a 65 ans et plus, comparativement à 20,5 % au Québec. En 2030, la cohorte des 65 ans et plus passera à 23 % de la population au Canada et à 25 % au Québec.

L’immigration n’est pourtant pas une panacée. Chiffres à l’appui, notre chroniqueur Gérard Bérubé expliquait récemment que « l’immigration débridée n’est qu’un remède temporaire à la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre et qu’un contre-pied parmi d’autres au vieillissement de la population ».

La politique libérale masque un problème de fond. La croissance de la population dope le PIB en général, mais si on s’attarde au PIB réel par habitant, qui permet de mesurer le niveau de vie, le Canada arrive dernier parmi les membres de l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE). La productivité, sujet tabou s’il en est, n’est tout simplement pas au rendez-vous depuis 2014. Sans un redressement de cet indicateur, nous ne pourrons espérer que le bien-être économique des Canadiens s’améliorera par une stratégie misant sur la croissance démographique.

Bien sûr, l’immigration est un apport considérable pour la diversité et la vitalité du Canada et du Québec. Les sociétés monolithiques, réelles ou fantasmées, qui sont basées sur la recherche de mythes fondateurs et de valeurs consensuelles, offrent un spectacle d’une plate grisaille.

Il faut avoir la force de débattre des seuils d’immigration, sereinement, et demander au gouvernement fédéral de refaire ses calculs en fonction des capacités réelles d’accueil, et non des promesses électoralistes qui ont peu de chance de se matérialiser en matière de bonification de l’offre de logements et d’amélioration des services publics.

Pour le Québec, le défi est double. Il faut miser sur des politiques et des leviers d’intégration des nouveaux arrivants au fait français, en leur tendant la main au lieu de les stigmatiser. Et trouver une façon de préserver le poids démographique du Québec dans la Confédération sans le déposséder de ses attributs de gardien du fait français en terre d’Amérique. Les deux objectifs sont compatibles, mais ils n’en demeurent pas moins difficiles à atteindre dans un contexte d’immigration effrénée.

Source: Le débat reste à faire

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Immigration Canada to set up new office to address staff racism complaints by this fall

2023/08/08 Leave a comment

Typical government response: set up a new office rather than fixing existing processes and offices, compounding the high growth rate of the public service and unlikely to dramatically improve or change the situation:

After multiple workforce surveys probing racism and discrimination toward employees, the federal Immigration Department says it is in the process of setting up an independent ombudsperson’s office, expected to be up and running by this fall.

“As with any effort toward real, lasting, and systemic change, we are not going to fix things overnight,” a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) wrote to CBC News in a statement.

The department said it would be creating an equity secretariat that will support “safe and independent channels for reporting racism and discrimination,” more accountability for senior managers, and also include an ombudsperson’s office available to all of its employees.

Source: Immigration Canada to set up new office to address staff racism complaints by this fall

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

USA: More teachers are quitting their jobs. Educators of color often are more likely to leave

2023/08/08 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen any comparable Canadian studies and grateful any readers who have to share:

Rhonda Hicks could have kept working into her 60s. She loved teaching and loved her students in Philadelphia’s public schools. As a Black woman, she took pride in being a role model for many children of color.

But other aspects of the job deteriorated, such as growing demands from administrators over what and how to teach. And when she retires in a few weeks, she will join a disproportionately high number of Black and Hispanic teachers in her state who are leaving the profession.

“I enjoy actually teaching, that part I’ve always enjoyed,” said Hicks, 59. “Sometimes it’s a little stressful. Sometimes the kids can be difficult. But it’s the higher-ups: ‘Do it this way or don’t do it at all.’”

Teachers are leaving jobs in growing numbers, state reports show. The turnover in some cases is highest among teachers of color. A major culprit: stress — from pandemic-era burnout, low payand the intrusion of politics into classrooms. But the burdens can be heavier in schools serving high-poverty communities that also have higher numbers of teachers of color. 

In Philadelphia, a city with one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the U.S., the proportion of Black teachers has been sliding. Two decades ago, it was about one-third. Last fall, it fell to below 23%, according to district figures.

In the school buildings where Hicks taught, most teachers were white. She said she and other teachers of color were expected to give more of themselves in a district where half the students are Black.

“A lot of times when you see teachers that are saving Black and brown kids on TV, it’s always the white ones,” Hicks said. “There are Black teachers and Hispanic teachers out there that do the same thing in real life, all the time.”

Nationally, about 80% of American public school teachers are white, even though white students no longer represent a majority in public schools. Having teachers who reflect the race of their students is important, researchers say, to provide students with role models who have insight into their culture and life experience.

The departures are undoing some recent success that schools have had in bringing on more Black and Hispanic teachers. Turnover is higher among newer teachers. And researchers have found that teachers of color, who tend to have less seniority, often are affected disproportionately by layoffs. 

In Pennsylvania, Black teachers were more than twice as likely to leave the profession as white teachers after the 2021-22 school year, according to a data analysis by Ed Fuller, an education professor at Penn State. Hispanic and multiracial teachers had a similar ratio, of around twice as likely.

Black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to be uncertified or teaching in an underfunded district, all of which is associated with someone leaving the profession at a higher rate, Fuller said.

“They’re in more precarious teaching positions, meaning you’re in a position with less resources and worse working conditions, so you’re more likely to quit no matter who you are,” Fuller said.

Sharif El-Mekki, a former Philadelphia teacher who leads the Center for Black Educator Development, said schools around the country come to him seeking help in recruiting teachers of color. But they don’t have plans to retain them, such as providing opportunities to help shape policies and curricula.

To address the problem, schools can start by ensuring students of color have better experiences in school themselves and offering them opportunities to consider teaching, El-Mekki said. Black teachers also are more likely stay on in school systems that have Black leaders, he said, as well as a culture and approaches to teaching that are anti-racist. 

“We need to think about, ‘How are they experiencing my school?’” he said. “If they are having a better experience with us, they are more likely to stay.”

Attrition by teachers of color can vary greatly by state or region. Overall, it has been higher compared with white teachers for two decades, since around the time federal policies began encouraging the closure of schools with low test scores, said Travis Bristol, a professor of teacher education and education policy at the University of California-Berkeley.

In underfunded schools with large populations of Black and Hispanic children, teachers say they can expect more responsibilities, fewer resources and more children troubled by poverty and violence.

“I’m still in the classroom because this is my version of resistance and pushing back on a system that was not designed for folks that look like me and kids that look like me,” said Sofia Gonzalez, a 14-year teacher of Puerto Rican heritage in Chicago-area public schools. “We as teachers of color have to find so much inner strength inside of us to sustain our careers in education.”

The last few years have been a trying stretch for teachers everywhere. They’ve had to navigate COVID-19, a pivot to distance learning and the struggles with misbehavior and mental health that accompanied students’ return to classrooms.

Then there’s the pay: Educators’ salaries have been falling behind their college-educated peers in other professions.

Teachers unions have warned of flagging morale, and there are signs lately that more educators are heading for the exits. Data from at least a handful of states — including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and Washington — is showing an increase in teacher attrition. 

Black teachers reported significantly higher rates of burnout and being significantly more likely to leave their job than white teachers, according to research sponsored by two national teachers unions and published in June by the Rand Corp. think tank.

Chantle Simpson, 36, taught her last day of school this spring in Frisco, Texas, ending her 11-year career as a teacher.

She described an exodus of her fellow teachers of color from the profession amid growing expectations from administrators, who put more work on teachers by repeatedly appeasing demands from parents.

Administrators — including those who are Black or Hispanic — put more pressure on Black and Hispanic teachers, she said.

“They believe we can handle more,” Simpson said. “Because we develop relationships better, the kids understand us more, so they’re more likely to behave for us or do what we ask them to. So we get fitted with the children who are more challenging or have more requirements. It’s crazy.”

That leaves those teachers with less time for the rest of their better-behaved students, Simpson said.

“I always was conflicted by it,” Simpson said. “It’s mixed with praise, but it’s a punishment. ‘Oh, you’re so great at building relationships, the kids really appreciate being with you, they respond to you.’ But at the same time, you’re increasing my workload, you’re increasing the amount of attention I have to give to one child versus my whole class.”

Source: More teachers are quitting their jobs. Educators of color often are more likely to leave

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‘Need too great’: Canada could raise immigration targets despite housing crunch

2023/08/05 Leave a comment

Change in Minister doesn’t mean a change in policy or understanding as government continues to ignore the linkage between housing, healthcare and infrastructure with immigration. Disappointing, as a change in minister provided an opportunity to signal recognition of this linkage and the negative impacts:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government won’t lower its immigration targets despite growing criticism that drastic population growth worsens existing housing shortages.

In one of his first interviews a week into his new cabinet role, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the government will have to either keep — or raise — its annual targets for permanent residents of about half a million. That’s because of the diminishing number of working-age people relative to the number of retirees and the risk it poses to public service funding, he said.
“I don’t see a world in which we lower it, the need is too great,” said Miller, who’s expected to announce new targets on Nov. 1. “Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at. But certainly I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.”Globally, advanced economies are confronting similar challenges from decreasing birthrates and aging workforces, and many are competing for skilled workers. But while immigration for some countries is a divisive issue that can polarize voters and even topple a government, Canada has comfortably relied on public support to open its doors more widely for working-age newcomers.Miller’s comments suggest the government is still counting on that backing to grow its population rapidly to stave off long-term economic decline. Trudeau’s government has consistently raised its target for permanent residents. Last year, foreign students, temporary workers and refugees made up another group that’s even larger, bringing total arrivals to a record one million.

Source: ‘Need too great’: Canada could raise immigration targets despite housing crunch

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Yakabuski: Bill 21 has made immigrants in Quebec grow even more attached to Canada 

2023/08/05 Leave a comment

Good commentary on a significant study (Le sentiment d’appartenance des immigrants au Québec s’effrite par rapport au Canada):

When then-premier Pauline Marois unveiled her sovereigntist Parti Québécois government’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values in 2013, she got an earful from an unlikely critic.

…

Source: Bill 21 has made immigrants in Quebec grow even more attached to Canada

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Poilievre says Canada’s immigration system is broken, sidesteps target cut questions

2023/08/05 Leave a comment

Not surprising that he ducked the levels question as he would be tarred as xenophobic. But his relentless focus on housing, and the increased discussion on the link between high levels of immigration and housing availability and affordability, are increasingly untenable.

Suspect if he had the political courage to advocate for a pause at current levels to allow housing and healthcare to start catching up (or not falling further behind), he might gain some political support in both immigrant and non-immigrant communities.

But I’m not a political strategist!

Canada’s immigration system is broken, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre charged Tuesday, as he sidestepped questions about whether he would change current targets.

Appearing before reporters on Parliament Hill, Poilievre criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent comments on housing and pledged to speed up entry for immigrants skilled in the building trades.

The federal government has set a target of welcoming 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025, although some worry about the pressure that could add to the country’s housing crisis, driven by what experts agree is a supply shortage.

Ottawa has defended its ambitious target as necessary given the labour shortage and thousands of job vacancies that employers continue to experience since the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered widespread lockdowns.

Poilievre slammed the Liberal target as driven by Trudeau’s “ideology,” but he did not answer repeated questions about whether he would consider reducing the number.

He said a Conservative government would base its immigration policy on the needs of private-sector employers, the degree to which charities plan to support refugees and the desire for family reunification.

“I’ll make sure we have housing and health care so that when people come here they have a roof overhead and care when they need it,” he said Tuesday.

“I’ll make sure that it’s easier for employers to fill genuine job vacancies they cannot fill.”

Statistics Canada reported last month the country is facing a little more than 781,000 job vacancies.

Poilievre’s comments come as the Conservatives try to increase their support in newcomer communities in some of the country’s largest cities and suburbs, selling the party as pro-immigration.

The Tories have struggled to rebuild such support since losing government in 2015, when they campaigned on a pledge to set up a tip line for so-called “barbaric cultural practices.”

A review of the party’s 2021 election loss called for recruitment of more diverse candidates and better outreach to cultural communities.

Besides appearing at numerous ethnic media roundtables, attending different cultural events and meeting with various business groups, Poilievre has championed cost-of-living issues in his outreach, from a lack of affordable housing to high food prices.

Rather than discussing immigration targets, the Conservative leader has focused on the system’s shortcomings.

His opponents, however, have been carefully watching his position. The federal NDP attacked Poilievre back in May for supporting a Bloc Québécois motion that condemned the government’s immigration goals for not properly considering their impact on the French language in Quebec, as well as housing, schools and health-care.

In his outreach, Poilievre has also honed in on concerns about the number of international students to die by suicide since the pandemic, with more relying on food banks.

He has promised to speed up licensing processes for doctors and nurses who come to Canada, saying Tuesday the Conservatives would ensure “that immigrants who come here as professionals get a chance to work in their profession.”

He also took aim at new Housing Minister Sean Fraser, who served in the immigration portfolio before the recent cabinet shuffle.

Calling Fraser “the worst immigration minister in Canadian history,” Poilievre blamed him and Trudeau for refugee claimants sleeping on Toronto’s streets due to a lack of spaces in the city’s shelter system.

The federal government recently announced it would give the city almost $100 million to help find housing.

Source: Poilievre says Canada’s immigration system is broken, sidesteps target cut questions

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Cuenco: Trudeau’s cynical immigration racket

2023/08/05 Leave a comment

Bit of a rant with some valid critiques of both major political parties and the institutions and people that support them:

When Canada’s population hit the 40 million mark earlier this summer, it was celebrated as a milestoneand a “signal that Canada remains a dynamic and welcoming country”, in the words of the country’s chief statistician. The Washington Post, among other foreign observers, cited this as evidence that “Canada is booming like it never has before”. It failed to mention, however, the recent closure of Roxham Road on the New York-Quebec border, an entry point for many thousands of irregular refugee border crossings since 2017.

These two policies — the population-growth plan and the border-crossing closure — may seem antithetical, but they are very much related. Together, they illustrate Ottawa’s distinctive approach to immigration. Notwithstanding the progressive rhetoric of its leaders, Canada has actually been quite proactive at restricting most uncontrolled migration through its “bureaucratic wall”, while ensuring through a highly selective strategy (which includes the lauded “points system”) that the majority of the newcomers who do arrive through controlled channels are, relatively speaking, well-off, well-educated and hailing from middle-class backgrounds.

In this way, Canada has been able to scoop up “the best and the brightest” from all over the world, which explains why immigration has historically always been a popular policy. In fact, this arrangement has been so politically stable that a viable anti-immigration party has yet to emerge at the national level, bucking the trend in other Western democracies.

Yet there are reasons to believe that a reckoning is in store — though not because Canadians’ cultural attitudes to immigrants have soured, as has happened in most European nations. Indeed, they are more likely to think of surgeons rather than Salafists when they look at who’s coming through their migration streams. If a countermovement against the status quo is to come, it will stem from a single factor: there will be nowhere for newcomers to live.

This may sound like a strange thing to say for the world’s second largest country by landmass, but most Canadians live in a handful of cities and, amid a global housing crisis, Canada ranks as among the absolute worst nations in the developed world for affordability. It has the highest household debt and, astonishingly, the lowest number of housing units per 1,000 people in the G7. Needless to say, the housing bubble has greatly reduced Canadians’ quality of life and made already pricey metropolises such as Toronto and Vancouver impossible to live in for those who are not already solidly affluent. And it shows: homelessness has exploded and sprawling tent cities are now a distressingly common sight. With circumstances as dire as this, how did policymakers in Ottawa figure it would be a good idea to welcome 1.5 million new residents by 2025?

A big part of the answer is that it’s all going according to plan. For the main overriding (if unsayable) goal of Canadian policymaking across all levels of government is to do everything possible to boost real estate values and rental prices rapidly and radically for the benefit of established homeowners and investors — and to the detriment of everyone else.

This cleavage, a primarily economic rather than a cultural or identitarian one, pits older home-owning Canadians from the Boomer and Gen X cohorts against struggling Millennials and Gen Zs; landlords against renters; long-settled immigrants against those fresh-off-the-boat: in other words, the insiders against the outsiders.

And it is clear where the loyalties of Canada’s political classes lay. The Nimby orthodoxy favoured by the insiders is evident in everything from steep development charges baked into municipal regulations — which make the cost of building houses prohibitive — to lazy, sticking-plaster solutions such as rent relief schemes, which simply funnel money into landlords’ pockets while doing nothing to address the underlying problems of housing undersupply. Once viewed in relation to this out-in-the-open conspiracy — the Great Canadian Racket — the government’s immigration targets, as well as its student visa policy, start to make sense.

For this purpose, Canada specifically wants prospective immigrants who are financially endowed, not penniless refugees; and it is able to draw in those candidates through its selective policy controls, whether they’re coming in as immigrants or as international students with enough funds to cover exorbitant rents and tuition fees.

The plight of international students is particularly tragic. Bright-eyed applicants to Canadian institutions from India and elsewhere are lured in with promises of a first-world education, only to be suckered into overpriced degrees while being cooped into horrendous housing conditions and forced to compete for menial gig work. Though Canada is not alone in experiencing this kind of steady glut of foreign entrants to its universities, it’s been conspicuous in its refusal to consider the extent of the exploitation involved — unlike in Britain, for instance, where authorities seem at least to have acknowledged the issue. While Canada has set about poaching high-skilled foreign workers from the US, a Toronto international student was found living under a bridge. Ottawa’s response to this and other horror stories seems to be: come on in!

This careless approach of importing boatloads of wealth-bearing immigrants to juice up the economic growth numbers, driving up rents for everyone and lowering the cost of labour, has been referred to by one housing policy commentator as “human quantitative easing”, an appropriately Orwellian-sounding name. Canada’s embrace of it has led to a perverse contradiction whereby its official monetary policy — namely, successive rate hikes to tame inflation (meaning increasingly costly mortgage payments for new homeowners) — is being offset by its unofficial “Human QE” policy, which, of course, exerts an inflationary effect.

If there is one ray of hope, it is that the immigrants and students themselves are beginning to rise up. Because of the genteel, middle-class character of many of these newcomers, they often have amour-propre — a keen sense of one’s own worth. The words of a Punjabi architect who decided to move back home are emblematic: “I respect myself too much to stay [in Canada].”

The ruling Liberals have all but abdicated moral responsibility on the issue, with Trudeau going from lofty rhetoric about “housing is a human right” to declaring that “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility”. And though carrying a kernel of truth at an abstract, technical level, his words nonetheless struck many as offensively tone-deaf. After all, Trudeau’s willingness to confront the provinces on issues such as carbon pricing merely highlights his studied indifference on housing.

This negligent stance is reinforced by members of the government caucus, such as ex-housing minister, Ahmed Hussen, who recently insisted that housing “is not a political issue” after purchasing his second rental unit; and Vancouver MP Taleeb Noormohamed, who made millions buying and flipping houses. In any event, the Trudeau Liberals are cruising towards a well-earned defeat at the polls.

The bad news for Canadians is that the alternative, the Conservative Party of Pierre Poilievre, is no better. Much like Hussen and Noormohamed, Poilievre is a card-carrying member of the investor-rentier oligarchy (private investment is, of course, key to funding more construction but this class has gone about it in all the wrong ways, presiding over the hyper-financialisation of new and existing supply). The Conservative “plan” is apparently based on pushing cities to build more homes with carrots and sticks; and though phrased in colourful populist language (“Fire the gatekeepers!”), it is essentially a weak mirror image of Trudeau’s feckless initiatives. Poilievre’s bluster about fining cities that fail to comply — which Ottawa may not even have the power to do — would almost certainly just result in municipalities retaliating by jacking up fees and charges even more to pay the new fines.

Furthermore, Poilievre shows no sign of breaking with the status quo on immigration, refusing to contradictTrudeau’s immigration targets. There are two possible reasons for this, both of which could be true. The first is that Poilievre fears being tarred as “Trump North” and doesn’t want to risk losing the Conservatives’ long-cultivated relationship with multicultural communities (the subject of an admiring 2014 essayby Rishi Sunak) — even though the young people in those same communities are suffering just as much from housing scarcity and would greatly benefit from a slowdown in the rate of new arrivals. The second is that Poilievre is an anti-statist libertarian who worships at the altar of Milton Friedman, the US monetarist who helped make the case for immigration maximalism, when he argued it would supercharge growth and kill the welfare state. It could just be that Poilievre genuinely believes, on ideological grounds, that such heedless immigration targets are a good idea.

Canada faces a perfect storm: a population bomb and a housing crunch, both the consciously engineered products of national policy. Staving off disaster will require heroic leadership to chart needed course corrections on housing, immigration and student visas, while acknowledging the hard political trade-offs that need to happen: the insiders must incorporate the interests and demands of the outsiders, or trigger a complete social breakdown. In the past, Canada’s storied Laurentian elite excelled at this kind of astute brokerage politics and built a nation with it, but their courage and vision have now given way to the reign of cowardice and mediocrity.

Source: Trudeau’s cynical immigration racket

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Meggs: Immigration and the Vote

2023/08/05 Leave a comment

Taking some of the government’s arguments in favour of self-administered oaths of citizenship and increased reliance on virtual ceremonies (except for those with Minister Miller!) to the extreme, Meggs argues that “If that’s how little we value citizenship, why do we make it so difficult to achieve?” why not move to complete “self-check-out” and provide voting rights to permanent residents at the municipal level, along with an integrated Permanent Residents to Citizenship process.

IMO, Meggs is to quick to state that political parties ignore the concerns of Permanent Residents, given that many have relatives and friends who are citizens, and that most Permanent Residents will become citizens:

Canada has been pretty clear about the benefits we expect from the nearly 500,000 immigrants now arriving annually, especially the wealth and economic growth we need them to generate.

But what’s in it for them?

Unless the pathway to citizenship speeds up dramatically, Canada will soon be home to millions of permanent residents who work, pay taxes, can even serve in Canada’s Armed Forces, but are prohibited from voting or running for office.

Those are in addition to the nearly one million Canadian residents in temporary work or study programs, more than 70 percent of whom aspire to stay.

The Discover Canada booklet, available to all would-be immigrants hoping to become Canadian, describes our country as a place guided by “a belief in ordered liberty, enterprise, hard work and fair play.”

What’s fair about taxation without representation?

Canada’s history provides ample evidence that those denied the vote – whether women, Japanese Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Indigenous or any other group – are also denied basic rights and subject to exploitation and discrimination.

A recent Abacus poll showed that Canadians remain generally enthusiastic about immigration, yet increasingly uneasy about the pressure on already-strained services like housing, education and health care. (Of course, both education and health care would collapse without foreign students’ fees and immigrant health workers’ skills.)

Those most affected by those shortfalls are immigrants themselves, confronted by constant economic and social hardship as they seek to put down roots.

Nonetheless, they prevail. The 2021 census showed that immigrants – people who were born elsewhere, immigrated to Canada and became citizens – already make up nearly one quarter of the electorate.

That share would be even higher if the 60 percent of “non-citizens” in the census tally, mostly people of working age and almost all engaged in the workforce, could vote. A large proportion of this group are young people who should have a right to participate in decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives.

In cities like Toronto, Montreal and Metro Vancouver, where the majority of newcomers seek to settle, those hundreds of thousands of new voters could reshape the political landscape. Until they join the electorate, their concerns are of no interest to campaigning politicians.

As things stand, permanent residents wait a minimum of three years before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship, often after years of effort to achieve permanent resident status.

To be fair, Canada has had some limited success in reducing wait times to achieve citizenship, moving the citizenship test online and even allowing successful applicants to self-administer the oath. (Unfortunately, Queen Elizabeth II remains our sovereign, according to Discover Canada’s downloadable study guide, a potential pitfall to applicants trying the multiple-choice and true/false online test.)

These efficiencies undermine the gravity and responsibility of achieving Canadian citizenship even as they seek to streamline the process. The once momentous milestone of citizenship is reduced to something akin to self-checkout.

If that’s how little we value citizenship, why do we make it so difficult to achieve?

Why not combine the permanent resident and citizenship process into one, reserving the right to revoke citizenship within a given time frame if certain criteria aren’t met?

In the meantime, provinces should allow permanent residents to vote at the municipal level, as cities like Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary and Hamilton have all proposed in recent years.

The cost of inaction is well captured in the painful past experience of Japanese Canadians.

In October 1900, naturalized citizen Tomeikichi Homma marched into the Vancouver Court House and demanded to be registered to vote. The elections officer, relying on racist provincial election rules, said he would go to jail before he registered “a Jap.”

Homma’s challenge was upheld by two BC courts before finally being overturned at the Privy Council in London, then the British empire’s highest court. It would be nearly 50 years before Japanese Canadians got the vote, after suffering through the forced dislocation and internment of the Second World War.

In his judgement upholding Homma’s right to register, BC Judge Angus McColl warned:

“The residence within the province of large numbers of persons, British subjects in name, but doomed to perpetual exclusion from any part in the passage of legislation affecting their property and civil rights, would surely not be to the advantage of Canada, and might even become a source of national danger.”

His warning applies equally to Canada today. Yes, Canada’s permanent residents will get to vote, eventually. We should make that wait as short as possible.

. . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Geoff Meggs – Geoff is a Canadian politician, political operative and communications expert, who served on Vancouver, British Columbia’s City Council from 2008 to 2017. He was first elected in the 2008 municipal election, and resigned his seat on city council in 2017 to accept a job as chief of staff to John Horgan, the Premier of British Columbia. Prior to his election to City Council in 2017, Geoff served as Executive Director for the BC Federation of Labour.

Source: Meggs: Immigration and the Vote

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

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