Human rights commission acknowledges it has been dismissing racism complaints at a higher rate

2023/03/25 Leave a comment

More on the CHRC with a note of caution to those advocating for direct access to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, rather than going through the Commission from Cindy Blackstock, the main advocate for the First Nation children harmed by Canada’s discriminatory child welfare system:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission’s recent numbers show it has been dismissing racism-based claims at a higher rate than other human rights complaints — but the commission insists it’s working to change that.

Numbers the commission provided to CBC News show that in most of the past five years, it reported a higher rejection rate for claims based on racism than for other complaints.

The statistics released by the commission show that during the first three years of the 2018-2022 period, the commission dismissed a higher percentage of race-based claims than it did others.

The year 2020 saw the largest disparity. The percentage of racism-based complaints the commission rejected — 13 per cent — was almost double the percentage of other types of claims it rejected (7 per cent).

The commission accepted more racism-based claims in subsequent years, referring them either to mediation or to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Last year, for example, the commission dismissed only nine per cent of racism-based claims, compared with a 14 per cent rejection rate for other types of claims

The commission describes itself as Canada’s human rights watchdog. It receives and investigates complaints from federal departments and agencies, Crown corporations and many private sector organizations such as banks, airlines and telecommunication companies. It decides which cases proceed to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

The commission released the data after the federal government concluded recently that the commission had discriminated against its Black and racialized employees.

The Canadian government’s human resources arm, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBCS), came to that conclusion after nine employees filed a policy grievance through their unions in October 2020. Their grievance alleged that “Black and racialized employees at the CHRC (Canadian Human Rights Commission) face systemic anti-Black racism, sexism and systemic discrimination.”

“I declare that the CHRC has breached the ‘No Discrimination’ clause of the law practitioners collective agreement,” said Carole Bidal, an associate assistant deputy minister at TBCS, in her official ruling on the grievance.

A group of current and former commission employees who spoke to CBC News said they’ve noticed all-white investigative teams dismissing complaints from Black and other racialized Canadians a higher rate.

CBC has requested interviews with the CHRC’s executive director Ian Fine and interim chief commissioner Charlotte-Anne Malischewski. The commission has declined those requests because it says the matter is in mediation.

In a media statement, the commission has said it accepts the TBCS’s ruling and is working to implement an anti-racism action plan.

Véronique Robitaille, the commission’s acting communications director, said the commission has been compiling data in the course of that work. The latest figures, she said, show the commission is taking action to address the concerns.

“The following data … shows the results of our ongoing actions to address concerns related to the handling of complaints filed on the grounds of race, colour, and/or national or ethnic origin,” Robitaille said in a media statement to CBC News.

Robitaille said the percentage of race-based complaints referred to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has doubled between 2017 (9 per cent) and 2021 (18 per cent). In 2021, the commission said it implemented a modernized complaint process that modified how it screens complaints based on race, colour and/or national or ethnic origin.

‘Racism runs amuck’

The people behind the cases the commission dismissed in recent years say they’re still waiting for justice.

Rubin Coward is one of them. The former member of the Royal Canadian Air Force told CBC News that he filed a complaint with the commission in 1993 alleging he experienced racism and was repeatedly called the N-word while stationed at CFB Greenwood in Nova Scotia. His claim was rejected.

Now a Nova Scotia community-based advocate for military, RCMP members and seniors, he regularly helps people file human rights complaints. He said he’s noticed that the ones that have nothing to do with race tend to be more successful.

“I was severely disappointed but I wasn’t surprised,” said Coward, reacting to the news that the CHRC discriminated against its employees.

“Regrettably, I have had the opportunity of dealing with [the Canadian Human Rights Commission] for over 30 years now. I am not surprised racism runs amuck inside there because, in individuals that I have assisted over the course of the last 30 years, that’s precisely what they and I have run into.”

The experiences of people like Coward have prompted law sector organizations to call for changes to Canada’s human rights system.

Both former Supreme Court justice Gérard La Forest and the United Nations have called on Canada to give Canadians direct access to the without having to go through the commission.

“We believe it is time to heed the advice of Justice LaForest and the UN. It is time to finally move to a direct access model federally. The current model has not and is not working for racialized Canadians,” said the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers (CABL) in a 2021 letter.

Almost 30 other organizations signed the letter, which was sent to Justice Minister David Lametti.

The Canadian Association Labour Lawyers (CALL) has called for similar reforms.

“Right now, the commission acts as a gatekeeper, and the commission has demonstrated that it needs to get its own house in order before it starts determining whether other people’s claims are meritorious,” said labour lawyer and member of CALL Immanuel Lanzaderas.

CALL also calls for the cap to be lifted on the sum of penalties the tribunal can impose. Currently, the maximum that can be awarded to victims is $40,000.

As calls for change grow louder, some are urging caution.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission was a key player in the early days of a landmark discrimination case that resulted in the federal government agreeing in principle to cover $40 billion in compensation for people harmed by Canada’s discriminatory child welfare system. The settlement also required the federal government to reform the system that tore First Nations children from their communities for decades.

Cindy Blackstock represents one of the groups that launched that human rights challenge. She said the commission played a key role in making sure First Nations children received justice.

“If you are a person who is discriminated against or are part of … a group that’s being discriminated against, there aren’t a lot of options for you to get justice,” said Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.

“I think we need to be really careful about not introducing ideas that may have the unfortunate side effect of gutting our human rights system when we need it the most.”

Blackstock said the fact that the commission discriminated against its own employees is still “disturbing.” She said the human rights system needs leadership with a track record of treating employees and the public with dignity.

In a statement, the commission defended its model, which triages complaints before they move to mediation at the tribunal stage.

“The commission’s model supports access to justice by working with complainants to articulate their experiences in a way that meets the requirements of the law, including identifying systemic discrimination,” said Malischewski.

“Commission mediators work closely with parties to empower them to reach speedy resolutions of their own design. When cases are referred to tribunal, commission lawyers regularly represent the public interest throughout the process, from the tribunal all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Source: Human rights commission acknowledges it has been dismissing racism complaints at a higher rate

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

Friedman: Our New Promethean Moment

2023/03/24 1 Comment

Friedman is always interesting as to where future conversations and emerging issues are headed:

I had a most remarkable but unsettling experience last week. Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, was giving me a demonstration of GPT-4, the most advanced version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and launched in November. Craig was preparing to brief the board of my wife’s museum, Planet Word, of which he is a member, about the effect ChatGPT will have on words, language and innovation.

“You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents mankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.”

Large language modules like ChatGPT will steadily increase in their capabilities, Craig added, and take us “toward a form of artificial general intelligence,” delivering efficiencies in operations, ideas, discoveries and insights “that have never been attainable before across every domain.”

Then he did a demonstration. And I realized Craig’s words were an understatement.

First, he asked GPT-4 — for which Craig was a selected advanced tester and which was just released to the public — to summarize Planet Word and its mission in 400 words. It did so perfectly — in a few seconds.

Then he asked it to do the same in 200 words. Another few seconds.

Then he asked it to do the same in Arabic. Just as quickly. Then in Mandarin. Two more seconds. Then in English again — but in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet. A few more seconds.

Then Craig asked GPT-4 to write the same description in an abecedarian verse — where the first line begins with the letter A, the second with B and so on through the alphabet. It did it with stunning creativity, beginning:

Alluring in Washington, is a museum so grand,
Built to teach, inspire, and help us understand.
Curious minds Planet flock to Word’s embrace,
Delving into language and its intricate grace
Every exhibit here has a story to tell,
From the origins of speech to the art of the quill.

And so on, through Z.

I could barely sleep that night. To observe an A.I. system — its software, microchips and connectivity — produce that level of originality in multiple languages in just seconds each time, well, the first thing that came to mind was the observation by the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The second thing that came to mind was a moment at the start of “The Wizard of Oz” — the tornado scene where everything and everyone are lifted into a swirling gyre, including Dorothy and Toto, and then swept away from mundane, black and white Kansas to the gleaming futuristic Land of Oz, where everything is in color.

We are about to be hit by such a tornado. This is a Promethean moment we’ve entered — one of those moments in history when certain new tools, ways of thinking or energy sources are introduced that are such a departure and advance on what existed before that you can’t just change one thing, you have to change everything. That is, how you create, how you compete, how you collaborate, how you work, how you learn, how you govern and, yes, how you cheat, commit crimes and fight wars.

We know the key Promethean eras of the last 600 years: the invention of the printing press, the scientific revolution, the agricultural revolution combined with the industrial revolution, the nuclear power revolution, personal computing and the internet and … now this moment.

Only this Promethean moment is not driven by a single invention, like a printing press or a steam engine, but rather by a technology super-cycle. It is our ability to sense, digitize, process, learn, share and act, all increasingly with the help of A.I. That loop is being put into everything — from your car to your fridge to your smartphone to fighter jets — and it’s driving more and more processes every day.

It’s why I call our Promethean era “The Age of Acceleration, Amplification and Democratization.” Never have more humans had access to more cheap tools that amplify their power at a steadily accelerating rate — while being diffused into the personal and working lives of more and more people all at once. And it’s happening faster than most anyone anticipated.

The potential to use these tools to solve seemingly impossible problems — from human biology to fusion energy to climate change — is awe-inspiring. Consider just one example that most people probably haven’t even heard of — the way DeepMind, an A.I. lab owned by Google parent Alphabet, recently used its AlphaFold A.I. system to solve one of the most wicked problems in science — at a speed and scope that was stunning to the scientists who had spent their careers slowly, painstakingly creeping closer to a solution.

The problem is known as protein folding. Proteins are large complex molecules, made up of strings of amino acids. And as my Times colleague Cade Metz explained in a story on AlphaFold, proteins are “the microscopic mechanisms that drive the behavior of the human body and all other living things.”

What each protein can do, though, largely depends on its unique three-dimensional structure. Once scientists can “identify the shapes of proteins,” added Metz, “they can accelerate the ability to understand diseases, create new medicines and otherwise probe the mysteries of life on Earth.”

But, Science News noted, it has taken “decades of slow-going experiments” to reveal “the structure of more than 194,000 proteins, all housed in the Protein Data Bank.” In 2022, though, “the AlphaFold database exploded with predicted structures for more than 200 million proteins.” For a human that would be worthy of a Nobel Prize. Maybe two.

And with that our understanding of the human body took a giant leap forward. As a 2021 scientific paper, “Unfolding AI’s Potential,” published by the Bipartisan Policy Center, put it, AlphaFold is a meta technology: “Meta technologies have the capacity to … help find patterns that aid discoveries in virtually every discipline.”

ChatGPT is another such meta technology.

But as Dorothy discovered when she was suddenly transported to Oz, there was a good witch and a bad witch there, both struggling for her soul. So it will be with the likes of ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and AlphaFold.

Are we ready? It’s not looking that way: We’re debating whether to ban books at the dawn of a technology that can summarize or answer questions about virtually every book for everyone everywhere in a second.

Like so many modern digital technologies based on software and chips, A.I is “dual use” — it can be a tool or a weapon.

The last time we invented a technology this powerful we created nuclear energy — it could be used to light up your whole country or obliterate the whole planet. But the thing about nuclear energy is that it was developed by governments, which collectively created a system of controls to curb its proliferation to bad actors — not perfectly but not bad.

A.I., by contrast, is being pioneered by private companies for profit. The question we have to ask, Craig argued, is how do we govern a country, and a world, where these A.I. technologies “can be weapons or tools in every domain,” while they are controlled by private companies and are accelerating in power every day? And do it in a way that you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We are going to need to develop what I call “complex adaptive coalitions” — where business, government, social entrepreneurs, educators, competing superpowers and moral philosophers all come together to define how we get the best and cushion the worst of A.I. No one player in this coalition can fix the problem alone. It requires a very different governing model from traditional left-right politics. And we will have to transition to it amid the worst great-power tensions since the end of the Cold War and culture wars breaking out inside virtually every democracy.

We better figure this out fast because, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Source: Our New Promethean Moment

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Canada needs 300,000 new rental units to avoid gap quadrupling by 2026: report [the Achilles heel of Canadian immigration policy]

2023/03/24 Leave a comment

Housing is the Achilles heel of Canadian immigration policy and levels:

Canada’s rental housing shortage will quadruple to 120,000 units by 2026 without a significant boost in stock, Royal Bank of Canada said in a report Wednesday.

In order to reach the optimal vacancy rate of three per cent, the report suggested Canada would need to add 332,000 rental units over the next three years, which would mark an annual increase of 20 per cent compared with the 70,000 units built last year.

The research analyzed vacancy rate data released in January by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

Canada’s vacancy rate fell to 1.9 per cent in 2022, its lowest point in 21 years, from 3.4 per cent in 2020 and 2021.

Competition for units also drove the highest annual increase in rent growth on record, by 5.6 per cent for a two-bedroom unit.

Canada’s rental housing stock grew by 2.4 per cent in 2022, led by Calgary at 7.4 per cent and Ottawa-Gatineau at 5.5 per cent, while Toronto and Montreal saw the smallest percentage increases at 2.1 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively.

“We haven’t seen that many additions to the purpose-built inventory in almost a decade, so you would think that added supply of units would ease some of the competition, but what the CMHC rental market data revealed to us was that it didn’t,” said RBC economist Rachel Battaglia.

Slow growth in Canada’s two most populous cities has been outpaced by rapidly increasing demand, partly fuelled by high immigration levels, she said. Annual federal immigration targets are set to grow eight per cent by 2025, meaning demand is unlikely to let up.

Battaglia also pointed to affordability and behavioural preferences for the influx of rentals sought. She said more Canadians are choosing to live alone, meaning fewer incomes per household.

“You have a lot of people being funnelled into the rental market who maybe would have liked to own something but it’s just not financially in the books for them right now,” said Battaglia.

The report estimated an existing deficit of 25,000 to 30,000 units of rental stock across Canada. In addition to building more supply, it recommended turning condo units into rentals, converting commercial buildings and adding rental suites to existing homes to help ease the pressure.

Without such measures, Battaglia said the market could “become infinitely more competitive.”

“Which is not something that we want to realize given the competition we’re already seeing,” she said.

“You’re already seeing rents increase dramatically.”

Source: Canada needs 300,000 new rental units to avoid gap quadrupling by 2026: report

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Why Ontario needs to collect race-based health data

2023/03/24 Leave a comment

While written from the perspective of Black Canadians, applies to all visible minority groups:

Statistics Canada has published mortality data for the Black population for the first time. The findings highlight the urgent need for systematic collection, analysis and use of race based data if we are going to deliver equitable health care.

Statistics Canada merged census data and death certification and reported that Black people in Canada are more likely than white people to die from HIV/AIDS, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, kidney disease, endocrine disorders and prostate, stomach and uterine cancers. 

Black men and women are five and 22 times, respectively, more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than the white population. But there was also a 10 to 70 per cent increased death rate for the Black populations compared to the white populations for other illnesses. 

For Black men, the risks of prostate cancer death were increased 30 per cent, diabetes 35 per cent and cerebrovascular disease 10 per cent. For women, there were increased risks for dying from stomach cancer (76 per cent), uterine cancer (78 per cent), and diabetes mellitus (48 per cent). 

Socio-economic factors are part of the reason for differences in death rates. But even when these are taken into account, significant disparities persist. 

Our health-care system lacks the foresight to identify those who need the most help and building services that meet their needs. We are currently witnessing efforts to move on from COVID-19, though infections persist; we have a health-worker shortage that will exacerbate problems of access to care, and this could all be made worse by a focus on privatization.

These crises affect us all. But, some will be more impacted than others and we have no way of knowing the true extent of the harm because we do not routinely collect sociodemographic data in the health system.

As of Jan. 1, all Ontario school boards were required to collect race-based data. Our health-care system should commit to the same as there is evidence that collecting race-based data is an effective tool for improving health.

A 2019 study found that Black women were under-screened for cervical cancer, which increased their risk of worse outcomes. To address this, TAIBU Community Health Centre developed a highly effective Afrocentric cancer screening program. The rates of breast, colorectal, and cervical cancer screening increased from 17 per cent to 72 per cent, 18 per cent to 67 per cent, and 59 per cent to 70 per cent, respectively. 

Without the data from research on racial health disparities, the health concerns and needs of Black communities would have been ignored.

The Black population was at higher risk of getting COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic. One third of employed Black women worked in health or social assistance jobs compared to 22 per cent of nonvisible minorities and because the Black population has the second highest poverty rates in Canada they were more likely to be using public transit and living in crowded housing.

Because Ontario public health units collected race-based data during contact tracing in the early pandemic, health officials were able to identify that Black populations had higher rates of infection. They used this information to develop community-based strategies to decrease infection, hospitalization and death.

Sadly, Ontario public health units no longer collect race-based data systematically. Contact tracing stopped as COVID-19 rates rose and no other system of race based data was put in its place. Further, Ontario did not mandate vaccination sociodemographic data collection.

Data collection by public health across Ontario was possible when the harms of anti-Black racism were on full display in 2020, and political will and public attention spotlighted community concerns. But this was short-lived, focused only on COVID -19 infection and ended mid 2021.

Without the collection, utilization and proper governance of race-based data, our disproportionate pain and deaths go unacknowledged, unaddressed and invisible.

We cannot afford to wait for another racial justice reckoning to reach popular discourse for change to happen.

Fiqir Worku, Paul Bailey and Kwame McKenzie are members of the Black Health Equity Working Group.

Source: Why Ontario needs to collect race-based health data

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Le «Québec bashing» pour faire avancer l’agenda islamiste

2023/03/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

Je suis arrivée du Maroc en 2005 accompagnée de mes deux jeunes garçons de un et trois ans. Je ne me sauvais pas d’une situation de violence particulièrement grave, mais d’un état de dépendance et de soumission assez banal pour une femme dans une culture arabo-musulmane.

Cela n’a pas été facile de redémarrer une vie de mère de famille monoparentale dans un nouveau pays, mais le Québec a été pour moi une destination de rêve, et je suis reconnaissante de l’accueil dont j’ai bénéficié. J’ai toujours trouvé injustes les accusations de racisme et d’islamophobie dont les Québécois sont la cible. Je me sens plus respectée au Québec que je ne l’étais dans mon pays d’origine. C’est ici que je me suis sentie citoyenne à part entière, libre de mener ma vie comme je l’entendais, sans jugement, et j’ai le sentiment d’avoir bénéficié de l’égalité des chances.

On parle beaucoup d’islamophobie, mais on ne parle jamais de la pression communautaire qui pèse sur les ressortissants des pays arabes pour les forcer à se conformer à des normes culturelles et religieuses et les empêcher de s’intégrer dans leur pays d’accueil. Mon expérience récente dans le milieu associatif montre à quel point il est difficile de faire émerger un islam humaniste au Québec, et comment les accusations de racisme et d’islamophobie contre les Québécois sont utilisées pour faire avancer des objectifs islamistes.

J’avais envie de m’investir dans le milieu associatif pour aider d’autres ressortissants de pays musulmans, surtout les jeunes, à s’en sortir. Je voyais le danger de la radicalisation et l’influence que certains prédicateurs ont sur les jeunes ici même, à Montréal. Mon neveu de 25 ans habitant à Laval, plein de talent et de joie de vivre, artiste peintre, parolier, bon joueur de soccer, est soudain tombé entre les griffes du radicalisme. Du jour au lendemain, il a arrêté ses études, ses activités artistiques et le sport, pour se consacrer à la religion. J’avais tellement envie de crier fort : laissez les enfants vivre sans influence religieuse, arrêtez de les endoctriner.

Dès que j’en ai eu la possibilité, j’ai donc décidé de m’investir dans la société civile. Le passage à Montréal d’un penseur égyptien prônant une approche humaniste de l’islam m’en a donné l’occasion. Autour de ce penseur, la possibilité de créer une association de citoyens de culture arabo-musulmane favorables à la laïcité s’est présentée. Dans le cadre de cette nouvelle association, nous avons commencé à organiser des activités culturelles et des rencontres virtuelles avec des membres dans différentes villes du Canada et des États-Unis.

Arme aux mains des intégristes

Cependant, une personne très connue dans le milieu associatif et très influente dans une certaine communauté musulmane de Montréal prenait de plus en plus de place dans la direction de l’association. Le temps accordé aux personnes non pratiquantes, athées ou favorables à la laïcité diminuait au bénéfice de nouvelles personnes qu’il invitait, ayant des idées plus proches d’un islam radical. Lorsque je lui en parlais, il m’expliquait qu’il était important d’écouter ces personnes pour les amener un jour à changer d’idées.

Je n’étais pas convaincue par ses arguments, mais étant donné sa notoriété et son expérience associative de plus de trente ans, j’acceptais. Cependant, plus le temps passait, plus des personnes défendant l’islam politique se joignaient à l’association qui, rappelons-le, avait été créée justement pour faire face aux idées de l’islam politique.

À chaque occasion qui se présentait — rencontres en personne, virtuelles ou téléphoniques —, ce monsieur trouvait le moyen de décrire le Québec comme une province raciste et islamophobe. Il utilisait toutes les tribunes pour diaboliser le Québec. Lorsque j’intervenais pour parler de mon expérience positive au Québec, il ridiculisait mes propos et expliquait que si j’étais bien accueillie, c’était en raison de mes positions « anti-islam ».

Ma position en faveur de la loi 21 est ce qui m’a valu le plus de moqueries de sa part. Il insinuait que je voulais plaire aux Québécois et que je n’étais qu’un instrument entre leurs mains. Lors de la nomination d’Amira Elghawaby comme représentante canadienne à la lutte contre l’islamophobie, il fit des pressions sur moi pour que je ne puisse pas exprimer mon avis contre sa nomination.

C’est à la suite de la dernière rencontre que j’ai décidé de quitter l’association. Parmi les intervenants, il y avait une maman syrienne qui racontait son expérience douloureuse en nous montrant la photo de sa fille dans la vingtaine tuée par Daech [groupe État islamique]. Lorsque la réunion fut terminée, ce monsieur réagit violemment en interdisant la diffusion d’une vidéo présentant nos interventions et déclara que la maman n’aurait pas dû qualifier Daech d’organisation terroriste.

L’association dont j’avais été membre fondatrice n’avait plus rien d’humaniste ni de laïque.

Je ne sais pas quel sera le mandat de la représentante canadienne à la lutte contre l’islamophobie, mais je sais que ce concept est une arme aux mains des intégristes pour faire avancer leurs objectifs politico-religieux et pour creuser un fossé entre les musulmans et les autres. Il y a de quoi s’inquiéter.

Source: Le «Québec bashing» pour faire avancer l’agenda islamiste

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Record jump in LGBTQ, religious hate crimes cases reported to police, with men and boys main targets

2023/03/24 Leave a comment

Previously reported but richer data:

A new report shows a record jump in hate crimes against the LGBTQ, Muslim and Jewish communities, prompting calls for more support for victims of the abuse.

The analysis based on police reports also showed around half of Canadians committing hate crimes had been accused of other crimes before and after those incidents.

The Statistics Canada hate crimes report notes that in 2021 there was a 64-per-cent rise in crimes against members of the LGBTQ community and a 67-per-cent increase in incidents linked to a person’s religion.

A further analysis of these police cases from 2018 to 2021 showed investigators found that two-thirds of the victims were boys and men, most of whom didn’t know the suspect – unlike victims of other crimes.

Almost half of the hate crimes cases were “violent,” including assault, harassment and uttering threats.

The number of hate crimes reported by the police, including military police, rose by 27 per cent to 3,360 in 2021 from 2,646 incidents in 2020.

Mohammed Hashim, executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and chair of the RCMP’s hate crimes task force, said the numbers are “an underrepresentation of the actual problem of hate in Canada.”

“Most people do not report hate crimes to the police mainly because they don’t have faith that anything will come of it,” he said, adding the statistics for 2022 are likely to show an even greater increase.

The Statscan report says: “Police data on hate crimes reflect only the incidents that come to the attention of police, and are classified as hate crimes.”

Just over one in five of the incidents resulted in “the laying or recommendation of charges,” the Police-Reported Hate Crime report said.

The analysis delved into who was committing the crimes and found that a cohort of almost 3,000 people are committing repeated offences. Between 2012 and 2018, 2,872 people were accused of at least one hate crime.

Just under half of them had been accused of an incident reported to the police – which may not relate to hate crimes. Fifty-four per cent came into contact with police again within three years after their “initial hate crime violation.”

The Statscan findings, published Wednesday, said after three consecutive years of decline, there was a 67-per-cent increase in reports of hate crimes based on religion.

That included a 71-per-cent jump from 2020 of hate crimes targeting Muslims, a 47-per-cent increase in hate crimes targeting Jews and a 260-per-cent surge in attacks on Catholics.

There were 423 hate crimes reported because of sexual orientation, up from the previous peak in 2019 of 265.

Tyler Boyce, executive director of the Enchante network, which includes over more than LGBTQ organizations, said the statistics were an understatement of the amount of abuse gay and lesbian people experience, and more support was needed. He expressed concern that Statscan does not track abuse directed at transgender people.

Mr. Boyce blamed the far right for fuelling a record number of attacks on members of the LGBTQ community. 

“We are seeing a rise in online hate and people are feeling emboldened to take this from an online space to in-person,” Mr. Boyce said.

Ontario had just over half of all hate crimes directed at people on the basis of sexual orientation.

Unlike other crimes, a large proportion of violent hate attacks were committed by strangers. In 3 per cent of cases, victims were killed or very badly injured. 

Based on population, members of the Jewish community were the most targeted religious group with 145 incidents per 100,000 people, followed by Muslims who experienced eight hate crime incidents per 100,000. Catholics experienced one incident per 100,000 people in 2021.

Nicole Amiel, of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said Canadian Jews were more than 10 times more likely than other religious minorities to report being the target of a hate crime.

Fatema Abdalla, of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said many hate crimes directed at Muslims were not reported to the police, but the council has seen a rise in people calling them for support after being attacked or abused in public.

Source: Record jump in LGBTQ, religious hate crimes cases reported to police, with men and boys main targets

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Carlaw: Declining naturalizations signal larger problems in Canada’s citizenship and immigration system

2023/03/23 Leave a comment

Left-wing perspective on problems with the citizenship program, with most of the issues pertaining more to immigration, particularly temporary residents, than citizenship save for perhaps fees and some of the language and learning requirements. Dual nationality prohibitions are more of an issue for Chinese nationals than Indian nationals.

And a bit silly to say the problem that the problem reflects that political and bureaucratic institutions are “disproportionately composed of men of primarily European descent discounting the earlier changes that were made by the same group and while political institutions continue becoming more diverse.

Surprising in his catalogue of issues, Carlaw failed to mention the long-promised revision of the citizenship study guide, Discover Canada, to a more contemporary and inclusion narrative:

A recent press release from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship that cites Statistics Canada data has highlighted concerns over a 40 per cent reduction in Canada’s “naturalization rate” — the rate at which permanent residents are becoming citizens.

The release, headlined Newcomers falling out of love with Canadian citizenship generated a number of other media headlines.

Concerns over how and whether those living and working in Canada are attaining citizenship and important rights — including to vote and run for office — are of course well placed. But love of country by immigrants is not the primary problem.

Individual choices and sentiments are a relevant factor, but there are observable structural explanations. Beyond Canada’s control, not all countries permit dual citizenship. That includes major source countries China and India where many immigrants to Canada are from. It is understandable that some permanent residents prefer not to renounce the citizenship of their country of origin. 

But within Canada’s control, there are troubling shifts in our overall citizenship and immigration model. Inequalities connected to its colonial nature have left growing numbers of residents without citizenship or even a pathway to it.

Annual immigration levels, for example, only represent those accepted as permanent residents and obscure the number of those admitted to Canada under less secure conditions.

This has occurred thanks to under-discussed but at times controversial shifts from permanent to temporary or multi-step migration. 

These shifts can be obscured by focusing primarily on the naturalization process and the sentiments some attach to it rather than the larger settler colonial landscape of migration and immigration and its relationship to citizenship and belonging at each stage.

Unkept promises and unlearned lessons

In recent years, Canada has apologized for past discriminatory immigration measures and its treatment of Indigenous Peoples. And there have been recent symbolic advances recognizing First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities and Canadians’ treaty responsibilities in the citizenship oath. 

However, social exclusions in modern forms related to the project of Canadian nation-building, citizenship and belonging persist. They are even intensifying in important respects.

A recent report from the Yellowhead Institute found that, despite an expressed commitment to fully implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action, the Federal government has only fulfilled 13, with those providing symbolic rather than structural remedies.

This example is indicative of why many Indigenous people — themselves denied the vote for much of Canada’s history — understandably view Canadian citizenship as, at best, a “kinder, gentler form of colonialism.”

These realities also remind us that the terms and hierarchies of citizenship and societal membership in Canada shift over time. They are subject to social struggle. And apologies and symbolic advancements do not relegate mistreatment to the past. 

Hierarchies of belonging persist

“White Canada” immigration policies that favoured European immigrants and largely excluded those from elsewhere were in place until the 1960s. 

These entrenched institutional and demographic dominance by white settlers. Europeans immigrating to Canada in earlier periods had ready access to permanent residence and eventual citizenship, unlike many of their contemporary racialized counterparts.

Institutional racism continues to be felt in the country’s immigration system and political life as tiers of citizenship and belonging continue to be practiced in old and new forms.

Canada adopted official multiculturalism in 1971, yet two years later it entrenched migrant worker programs, primarily for racialized workers from the Global South. As with past exclusions, these workers still have to navigate programs and realities that prevent or make it difficult for them to access permanent residence and citizenship.

This is particularly the case for those working in what are deemed to be “low skill” positions. Many such workers become “permanently temporary” despite ongoing demands for their labour.

Today, Canada’s political institutions are still disproportionately composed of men of primarily European descent. And they continue to set and enforce problematic terms of citizenship and societal membership. 

Today’s more difficult pathways to citizenship

Today’s immigrants — who mostly come from the Global South — face a system of complex chutes and ladders when it comes to their status in Canada. That system leads many migrants to remain stuck in an immigration purgatory, far away from pathways to permanent residence, let alone citizenship.

Even those often characterized as the perfect immigrants — international students who pay vast sums that subsidize our post-secondary education system — face limited and precarious pathways to permanent residence and citizenship. 

As economist Armine Yalnizyan recently noted, today for each person granted the security of permanent residence, there are two migrant workers or international students who have uncertain or no access to permanent status.

This could prove an obstacle to attracting and retaining workers. When it comes to citizenship and societal membership, it hinders inclusion by creating an exploitable class of workers who lack full political and social rights.

In the face of these realities, many migrants, students and workers are mobilizing to address these exclusions. This includes protests in several cities demanding “status for all” to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

To return to the later stages of the process of becoming Canadian by adopting citizenship, under the former Conservative government, citizenship became harder to get and easier to lose by design.

Unfortunately, amidst the last decade’s battles between more exclusionary Conservative and rhetorically warmer Liberalvisions of citizenship, tougher and more expensive procedures than previously existed remain under both.

The costs of applying for citizenship increased significantlyunder the Conservatives, and have remained prohibitive for many. The Trudeau government has made some positive reforms, such as reversing changes that made it take longer to become a citizen. But it has failed to follow through on its election promises to eliminate citizenship fees.

One recent study argues that it is likely that fee hikes and tougher, often expensive language requirements negatively impact a significant number of applicants.

Even those who have managed to obtain permanent residency and fulfilled their residency requirements face further “boundaries related to management flaws, classed naturalization, and cultural biases.” That means many, particularly refugee claimants and family class immigrants, struggle with the citizenship process.

For those who can reach the end of the process, some find it distasteful to continue to have to declare an enforced oath to a colonial figure, a reminder of the structures and hierarchies discussed in this article. 

Given this context, the significant decline in Canada’s naturalization rate should be less surprising, though no less alarming as Canada continues to foster and even intensify inequalities of societal membership in its citizenship and immigration regime.

Source: Declining naturalizations signal larger problems in Canada’s citizenship and immigration system

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Black Torontonians ‘significantly’ more likely to face discrimination on regular basis, study finds

2023/03/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

Black people in Toronto are “significantly” more likely to face discrimination on a regular basis than white residents, according to a recent in-depth report on Torontonians’ day-to-day experience with microaggression and discrimination.

A research brief entitled Everyday Racism: Experiences of Discrimination in Torontoreleased Tuesday highlighted findings on discrimination pulled from the Toronto Social Capital Study published in November.

The first-of-its-kind report, led by the non-profit Toronto Foundation and Environics Institute for Survey Research, found that roughly 76 per cent of Black Torontonians experience racial discrimination at least a few times a month.

Source: Black Torontonians ‘significantly’ more likely to face discrimination on regular basis, study finds

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After months of backlogs, Canadians can now check their passport application status online

2023/03/23 Leave a comment

Progress. Presumably we will see in coming weeks if there are any glitches in the app or hopefully not:

Canadians waiting anxiously for their passports to arrive before a trip abroad now have a new option to check the status of their applications.

The federal government launched a new online portal on Tuesday that allows recent applicants to see where their applications stand.

Passport offices became overwhelmed with applications last year as the government began to ease pandemic-related travel restrictions. The result was a backlog that hobbled the application system.

Source: After months of backlogs, Canadians can now check their passport application status online

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An Ottawa-Ontario turf war hobbled efforts to bring in skilled workers. Here’s what ended it

2023/03/23 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Around the world, ideology drives the politics of immigration by pushing people apart.

Across Canada, geography drives a deeper wedge between rival governments in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park.

Over the past decade, an undeclared turf war has hobbled Ontario’s attempt to recruit skilled workers. The federal government refused to give Canada’s biggest province a significant say in who came here.

Now, Ontario is finally getting a bigger role in selecting skilled immigrants. And Ottawa has belatedly declared peace in our time.

Just in time.

This month, a federal Liberal cabinet minister and his Progressive Conservative counterpart in Ontario agreed to double the skilled immigrants selected by the province for rapid resettlement, matching workers with work. By 2025, Ontario will get to select 18,000 skilled workers, primarily in the health-care, construction and hi-tech fields ― up from 9,000 in 2021 and just 1,000 a decade ago.

How did it happen?

The rise of inflation, the risk of recession, and the recurrence of labour shortages forced Canada’s two biggest governments, at Queen’s Park and on Parliament Hill, to work together after years of talking past each other.

But it’s not just the economic environment. The political climate has also brought the rival governments together to collaborate.

Two erstwhile enemies, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford, now meet almost monthly to cut cheques and cut ribbons for new factory investments. Against that backdrop of bonhomie, Monte McNaughton, one of Ontario’s most politically astute cabinet ministers, went one step further to bridge the partisan divide with his federal counterpart.

As the province’s minister of labour, McNaughton has long been a linchpin of Ford’s outreach strategy with union leaders. But he also has special responsibility for immigration and training, so when Sean Fraser was sworn in as the federal minister two years ago, McNaughton quickly texted an old pal to get his phone number.

That pal was Katie Telford, the PM’s chief of staff, with whom McNaughton has kept in touch since they served together as teenage pages in the legislature. Armed with Fraser’s number, McNaughton disarmed the new Liberal minister by dropping Telford’s name ― proof that he could work across ideological and geographical lines.

“I got his number from Katie and got ahold of him,” McNaughton told me this week. “I said to him, ‘This is not about politics whatsoever. We have a serious challenge in terms of the labour shortage … so let’s grow the numbers and actually do something that is going to make a meaningful difference on the ground.’”

They’ve been talking and texting ever since ― without political aides, without bureaucratic advisers, just the two of them. They started far apart, because the inherited challenge wasn’t just about bipartisanship but bilateralism.

Historically, the federal government was accustomed to unilateral action while Ontario contented itself with inaction. By contrast, Quebec had led the way decades ago, winning shared jurisdiction on immigration on the strength of its special French-language needs; meanwhile, Western provinces had quietly persuaded Ottawa to let them select thousands of immigrants to meet local labour market needs amid growing economies.

Ontario had never bothered to ask in the past. As the jobs went West, so did the talent.

A decade ago, seven out of 10 immigrants to Western provinces were in the “economic” class, compared to barely half of those coming to Ontario. By the time Queen’s Park woke up to that reality, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in Ottawa were unwilling to help.

“We’re not interested in devolving services to the junior level of government,” then-immigration minister Jason Kenney told me at the time.

Now, with the roles reversed ― there’s a federal Liberal minister in Ottawa, while his Ontario counterpart is a PC ― the roadblocks have been removed and a back channel reopened.

“I give full credit to Fraser,” McNaughton said in our interview. “We were more desperate than other provinces from a labour shortage perspective. We were receiving, as a percentage, less (skilled nominees) than any other province in the country.”

For his part, Fraser says he never saw it as a turf battle. The economic stakes are too high for political grudges or bureaucratic games.

A mismatched labour market “is one of the challenges that keeps me up at night,” Fraser told me at a recent Democracy Forum at Toronto Metropolitan University (where he also talked about crossing party lines to get advice from ex-PM Brian Mulroney).

If workers end up in the wrong regions for the wrong jobs, while skilled jobs are going begging in businesses elsewhere, all Canadians will pay the price of a delayed recovery and missed opportunity, he argued.

“I think this was a unique opportunity for us to increase (Ontario’s) provincial nominee program levels,” Fraser said at the TMU event I co-hosted last week, adding coyly: “Before too long we’re going to show up in Ontario.”

Days later, both ministers did indeed show up in Toronto to announce their landmark agreement. Ontario’s biggest employers promptly hailed the deal as an economic breakthrough that ruptures previous roadblocks.

Despite the doubling of the program, the new numbers are still small and the progress largely symbolic. But it is a strategic first step.

Immigration always has the potential to drive people apart. Consider the continuing tumult in the U.S. and U.K.

Yet two Canadian cabinet ministers quietly came together, in a bipartisan and bilateral way. They tried to work it out, so that the economics would turn out better for workers and workplaces alike.

Small numbers, yes. But no small feat.

Source: An Ottawa-Ontario turf war hobbled efforts to bring in skilled workers. Here’s what ended it

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