Clark: Three Conservative MPs who saw no evil until after lunch

2023/03/02 Leave a comment

Good analysis and depressing reality that Pierre Poilievre is overly beholden to the more extreme elements in the party. And Max Bernier is already fundraising off this “discreet” repudiation of the AfD by Poilievre:

If you’re not familiar with the policies of the Alternative for Germany, the party represented by MEP Christine Anderson, you’re not alone. But the three Conservative MPs who met her for a long lunch last week didn’t get there by accident.

That is not to say the three MPs are racist. Leslyn Lewis, Colin Carrie, and Dean Allison aren’t known as that at all. They are the Conservative Party’s unofficial conspiracy caucus.

So when the Conservative Party issued a statement that said the three didn’t know Ms. Anderson’s views, and later two organizers of the three-hour lunch said the MPs knew a lot about who they were meeting, well, both of those things might be sort of true.

It’s easy to find out the AfD stands for anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic views, because it can be quickly discovered on the internet, in newspapers or videos, or from many sources. But it also seems very possible that these three read about it and didn’t believe it.

Mr. Carrie apparently didn’t believe COVID-19 vaccines were safe, so, according to a Conservative source, he was one of the four MPs who did not go the Commons in person in the fall of 2021. Mr. Allison apparently didn’t believe public health officials who said the veterinary anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin wasn’t proven for treating COVID-19, and he gave a presentation about it to a group of Tory MPs. Last year, Ms. Lewis falsely claimed a then-undrafted World Health Organization treaty would give the WHO power to dictate all of Canada’s health care decisions in a pandemic. The three wink at the theory that the World Economic Forum is a cabal to control Canada and the world.

And guess what? Ms. Anderson shares a lot of their views about vaccine mandates and globalists. They saw her as an ally, and apparently chose not to see the rest. She tells people she is not xenophobic or anti-Muslim, although she doesn’t really eschew those sentiments. “I do not have problems with Muslims. I have a problem with Islam. I do not consider Islam to be a religion,” she told the right-wing website Rebel News.

Prominent AfD figures have played down the Holocaust and Nazi era, and spoken of immigrants as invaders. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs raised concerns about the three MPs meeting with Ms. Anderson. The AfD tends to target Muslims with its policies, but they include banning kosher meat and “non-medical” circumcision. Its politicians aren’t the advocates of freedom they claim to be.

So Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did the right thing when he issued a statement to reporters who asked that criticized Ms. Anderson’s views as “vile.” That’s unequivocal. The party issued a statement saying the three MPs had not known about her views. Mr. Carrie took the extra step of tweeting that he regretted his mistake and will do better.

That didn’t settle it, however. Mr. Poilievre didn’t put his statement on his or the party’s social media or website, and critics accused him of try to keep it low-key with his own base.

But he probably got more criticism from the right – and Mr. Carrie got a helping of it, too – from people who accused him of backing down in the face of criticism from the media. Rebel News ran a piece that said Mr. Poilievre “panicked” and threw his MPs to the “media wolves.” They didn’t feel the Conservative Leader stood up for principle, but rather that he caved.

That is a message to Mr. Poilievre that he will pay a political price on his right wing if he distances the Conservative Party from extremists like the AfD. And, by the way, the People’s Party is waiting there.

It’s worth noting Ms. Anderson’s AfD evolved into what it is because of how it dealt with extreme elements.

Alternative for Germany came out in 2013 as an anti-European Union splinter from conservative parties, but its first leader, Bernd Lucke, quit in 2015 complaining the party was taken over by xenophobic elements under new leader Frauke Petry. In 2017, Ms. Petry lost a power struggle with the more extreme far right wing of the party, and later quit the party, too.

So if there’s a vein of folks in the Conservative Party that doesn’t want to see the extremism of some who claim to be allies, they should be warned. There is a line. If you choose not to see it at your lunch table, it just gets closer.

Source: Three Conservative MPs who saw no evil until after lunch

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

Les sympathisants libéraux contre la nomination d’Amira Elghawaby

2023/03/02 Leave a comment

Appears appointments not even a winner among Quebec Liberals (web panel, less accurate than a poll):

La désignation d’Amira Elghawaby comme représentante spéciale du Canada chargée de la lutte contre l’islamophobie déchire non seulement les députés québécois, mais aussi les sympathisants québécois du Parti libéral du Canada (PLC) : 39 % d’entre eux la désapprouvent, tandis que 25 % l’approuvent, révèle un sondage Léger-Le Devoir.

« Il y a là un problème. M. Trudeau ne peut même pas s’appuyer sur ses propres électeurs. C’est une décision qui est controversée », souligne Éric Normandeau, stratège-conseil chez Léger.

À peine 15 % des Québécois — toutes allégeances politiques confondues — appuient le choix du premier ministre Justin Trudeau de confier ce rôle à Mme Elghawaby, qui avait déjà écrit, par exemple, que « la majorité des Québécois semblent influencés non pas par la primauté du droit, mais par un sentiment antimusulman ». Le gouvernement de François Legault avait exigé sa démission en raison notamment de ces propos controversés, une proposition balayée de la main par Ottawa.

En contrepartie, 49 % des répondants désapprouvent la nomination d’Amira Elghawaby, qui est en vigueur depuis le 20 février dernier.

Enfin, 36 % des personnes sondées ont préféré ne pas prendre position, ce qui est étonnant considérant « le gros, gros, gros tapage médiatique autour de cela », note Éric Normandeau.

Il voit dans ce taux d’abstention élevé « plus un malaise qu’une méconnaissance » de l’affaire de la part de plus d’un membre du panel Web de Léger (LEO) consulté pour l’occasion. « Ça ne veut pas dire qu’ils n’en ont pas entendu parler. Ça veut dire que ça peut être un sujet complexe […] Ils ne sont pas capables de se faire une opinion », explique-t-il.

Les sympathisants du Bloc québécois étaient plus sujets à exprimer leur opinion : 3 % d’entre eux trouvent que M. Trudeau a pris une « bonne décision », et 80 % trouvent qu’il a pris une « mauvaise décision ». Il s’agit d’« un cheval de bataille qui est bon pour le chef bloquiste, Yves-François Blanchet, et la députation bloquiste », indique Éric Normandeau.

Source: Les sympathisants libéraux contre la nomination d’Amira Elghawaby

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May: The time and place for consultants

2023/03/02 Leave a comment

Good discussion and commentary on the issues which reflect some longstanding management failures at both political and bureaucratic levels as well as the overall complexity of government and accountabilities:

Canada’s budget watchdog says it’s time for a “deep dive” into the workings of the public service to unravel why departments are spending billions of dollars on consultants while also hiring a record number of employees.

Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux said the recent spotlight on the government’s growing dependency on contracting for professional services — for everything from policy advice to running programs — raises fundamental questions about the role of the public service.

“Do we have the public service that we need right now?” he said in an interview. “Is it well equipped to deal with the challenges and the expectations that Canadians have of the public service — especially in light of its growth in recent years and the extensive use of outside advice and services?

“I think it’s time to do a real deep dive.”

Giroux is joining a growing chorus of experts who argue it’s time to fix the public service. Former clerks of the Privy Council Office, senior bureaucrats and academics are weighing in with views on what’s wrong and possible ways to fix it.

Giroux’s call comes with the release of his latest report on the government’s spending plans. They showed the cost of outsourcing will hit a record $21.4 billion this year. Spending on contracting has increased by more than a third since 2017-18.

He said the growth of consultants during the COVID-19 crisis was expected, but it hasn’t stopped. Rather than slow down to pre-pandemic levels, contracting which shot up 20 per cent in 2021-22, is still growing at a rate of more than 10 per cent this year.

The bigger question is why departments are adding thousands of employees to the federal payroll at the same time. The number of new hires has grown in lockstep with more consultants.

“If you increase the size of the public service, it’s because you feel there are needs that need to be met. That should reduce the use of consultants, but it’s not happening. They’re both growing in line,” said Giroux.

Personnel costs are the biggest single operating cost in government. The PBO estimates the seven-year hiring boom under the Trudeau government is expected to push the size of the workforce to about 409,000 jobs within five years. 

The PBO said spending on personnel grew an average of 6.7 per cent a year – from $39.6 billion to $60.7 billion since 2015. That’s about a four-per-cent increase in compensation for each full-time employee.

Giroux said it might make sense if services were improving, but the bureaucracy is taking a beating for backlogs and delays in passports, immigration, access to information and privacy (ATIP) requests, veteran services and employment insurance.

It also doesn’t add up because the government and unions claim public servants are as productive, if not more, since the pandemic and the recent shift to hybrid work.

“Services are not improving significantly. In fact, some would say they are improving not at all… So, I wonder what’s going on? It’s a real mystery,” said Giroux.

The House of Commons government operations committee is juggling three separate probes into federal contracting. The most politically charged is the $116 million the Trudeau government spent on scandal-plagued consultants McKinsey & Company. Canada’s auditor general Karen Hogan announced she will conduct a review into the McKinsey contracts.

The committee is also widening its study to contracts of other big consulting firms — Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, Ernst and Young (EY) and Accenture.

Many worry the committee hearings are so focused on the political blowback of tarnished McKinsey and its possible ties to the Liberals, that getting at what’s behind the growth of consultants and employees is getting lost.

Consultants, who are hired for their expertise and new ideas, never seem to leave. Once in, they get a lock on work and prevent the public service from developing its own in-house expertise.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for departments to follow on what work is best done by public servants or contractors. Many expect such guidance will be one of the recommendations out of these studies.

Treasury Board argues both are growing simply because there is so much more work. An activist government, the Liberals have fingers in many pies and ministers have mandate letters with long to-do lists. Treasury Board President Mona Fortier has saidthe cost of professional services as a percentage of federal spending has largely remained the same since 2011.

Dominic Barton, McKinsey’s former global managing director, told MPs that McKinsey doesn’t provide policy advice. Rather, it “executes” what government wants to do, be it streamlining its pay or passport processes or digitization, moving paper-based operations to electronic.

But Barton also said the public service operates in the “stone age” and the government needs to up its game with more training and new technology.

“There’s a technology transformation that’s needed in this government and in all governments. I don’t want to be harsh about it, but we’re in the Stone Age. We have to spend the money. That will need a lot to be able to do it, but it will enable the organization to do more if we do it.”

The government is heavily reliant on IT consulting. Thirty per cent of its IT jobs are vacant and the experts they need are often not interested in becoming public servants. All this scrutiny will make public servants skittish about using them which could be a problem because “government can’t run without them,” said one senior bureaucrat.

The government contracts for all kinds of services. For cleaning, security, building maintenance, translation, temporary help and IT services. A Carleton University research team studying federal contracts took a run at breaking down the kind of services consultants offered departments.

Management consulting, which is typically for advice, is a small portion of government’s contracting bill for professional services. It has grown the most since in recent years and hit about $800 million in 2021-22.

But it’s the public service’s job is to provide frank and “fearless” advice to government – advice that puts the public interest first.

The growth in consulting raises questions whether public servants have lost its capacity to provide policy advice or their advice isn’t sought or trusted. Maybe they lack inhouse expertise or savvy to be good shoppers and buyers? Or are risk-averse public servants so cowed by years of bashing and criticism they opt for the safer course of running ideas by consultants or hiring those who provide the answer they think their political masters want to hear?

A common concern among those calling for reform of the public service is the centralization of power in the prime minister’s office and the frayed trust between politicians and bureaucrats. That relationship underpins Canada’s Westminster-style democracy.

Giroux, a long-time public servant before becoming an agent of Parliament, believes the public service has the capacity to provide advice if there’s an appetite for it.

“Is it because ministers don’t trust the advice they’re getting from the public service, which would be a big issue,” he said. “I think it leads to the need for a deep dive a thorough look at the state of the public service. Is it still the public service that politicians the executive, parliamentarians and Canadians expect.”

Giroux said the public service needs a top-to-bottom review of how the public service is structured, organized and equipped to deliver the kind of services Canadians expect today. In a 24/7 world, the public service has to rethink how it works, hires, pays, manage its workers, including where they work and hours of work.

Michael Wernick, a former clerk and Jarislowsky chair at the University of Ottawa agrees structural issues are key. He says the “core software” of government – its mountain of rules, job classifications, human resources regime and technology, are outdated.

“There’s very little attention to how it works. Its internal governance and processes and structures – basically the software on which it runs is like Windows 95,” he said

Donald Savoie, one of Canada’s leading experts on public administration, has argued for a royal commission. He said the “alarm bells about the public service have been ringing for a long time” and it’s time for a debate. Savoie says he was an “academic in the wilderness” when he warned about eroding trust and the concentration of power in the 1999 book, Governing form the Centre. Now, it’s a premise that’s widely accepted.

But Savoie said any efforts to reform the public service won’t get off the ground without the support of the prime minister.

Giroux said the state of the public service has been on his mind for a while. The pandemic dramatically changed the nature and how public servants work so the timing is ideal.

He recently mused at a Senate’s committee about a nonchalance pervading the public service, a ‘broken system” and the need to “crack the whip” in some departments. He lamented the lack of a “challenge function” for public servants. They set their own targets for the programs they run, often setting the bar “not too high so that it doesn’t look too easy but neither too low.”

“There are pockets of excellence, but there are also pockets of, I would say, nonchalance in the public service. They’re overwhelmed or something is not right. Not being inside the public service, unfortunately, I cannot pinpoint what is in need of fixing,” he said.

Source: The time and place for consultants

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Proposal to make citizenship ceremonies optional a ‘disservice to all of Canada’

2023/03/02 Leave a comment

More coverage of this misguided proposal:

A proposal by the Canadian government to allow prospective citizens to tick a box on a website rather than affirm a formal oath of citizenship is causing concern among those who see the longstanding swearing-in ceremony as an important rite of passage for new Canadians.

As detailed over the weekend in the Canada Gazette, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration is proposing to allow new citizens to fast-track their applications by giving them the option of affirming their citizenship oath via a secure internet webpage rather than raising their hands at a citizenship ceremony.

“In the 5 years from 2016–2017 to 2021–2022, citizenship grant applications have more than doubled, from 113,000 to 243,000,” read the statement published in the Gazette.

“Immigration levels continue to rise, with a target of 500,000 permanent residents for 2025, which will contribute to ongoing increases in citizenship applications.”

As of October 2022, the department said, around 358,000 citizenship applications were pending with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, with some waiting over two years before having their citizenship ceremony — the last step in Canada’s long and drawn-out citizenship process. 

The change, the department said, would save prospective citizens two to three months of processing time. 

Institute for Canadian Citizenship CEO Daniel Bernhard told the National Post that losing the ceremony is tantamount to losing an important chapter in Canadian history.

“It’s really unfortunate,” he said.

“The day you become a citizen is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion that has implications for every generation afterwards. People recognize that, and these are very special, meaningful and very emotional days, not just for the new citizens but also for their family and friends.”

Rather than giving options to bypass the affirmation, Bernhard said Canada should be doing more to celebrate citizenship.

Indeed, fewer Canadian permanent residents are going through the process of obtaining citizenship.

Last month, Statistics Canada reported that just under half of permanent residents who immigrated to Canada between 2011 and 2021 obtained Canadian citizenship.

That’s compared to just over 75 per cent in 2001.

A 2022 Leger poll commissioned by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship found immigrants are realizing that life in Canada isn’t as rosy as assumed, with the current leadership and/or government (43 per cent), high cost of living (35 per cent) and racism (19 per cent) listed as the top three reasons why they wouldn’t recommend others immigrate to Canada.

That same survey reported around 22 per cent of new immigrants saying they were likely to leave Canada over the next two years.

That said, the same survey reported 71 per cent of respondents saying Canada provides immigrants with a good quality of life.

While Bernhard understands the need for the government to streamline the process, particularly in this time where unreasonably long processing delays have become default for the federal public service, he stresses it shouldn’t be at the expense of ceremony.

“I understand the government is facing a lot of pressure from people who, very reasonably, want their applications to be processed more quickly, but I would hope that we would be able to find those efficiencies in other parts of the process,” he said.

“These celebrations are really special, and if we do away with them, that’s a disservice to all of Canada.”

Source: Proposal to make citizenship ceremonies optional a ‘disservice to all of Canada’

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Soon a Canadian citizenship oath could be just a scroll and click away: But should it be?

2023/03/01 Leave a comment

The Canada Gazette notification of plans to further water down citizenship by allowing the oath to be administered by a “non-authorized person” risks further weakening the meaningfulness of Canadian citizenship.

IRCC justifies the proposal solely on operational and financial grounds, without any serious discussion of policy considerations. In a sense, this repeats the process of the previous government’s quintupling of adult citizenship fees in 2014-15, with a Gazette notice that discounted any impact from fee increases on naturalization rates. As we know from the recent Statistics Canada analysis and the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, that was likely one of the factors, along with the impact of the pandemic, on the drastic decline in naturalization from 60.4 percent in 2016 to 45.7 percent in 2021, five to nine years after landing.

More worrying is some of the rationale for this change. Upfront costs of some $5 million over 10 years are expected to be recouped though reduced ceremonies as the Gazette notice states: 

“Consequently, it is expected that participation in ceremonies would be lower than it is currently, and there would likely be fewer ceremonies overall. Therefore, the Government of Canada would save costs, as the proposal would likely reduce the number of ceremonies the Department would be required to arrange.”

In a nod to inclusion, the notice mentions that applicants will save “up to three months processing time.” Furthermore, “swearing or affirming in this manner via the secure online solution is expected to take significantly less time” than the 90 minutes the current ceremonies take. 

These are insignificant compared to changes made early in the government’s mandate that eased residency and language requirements, or the more recent change to the Oath to recognize Indigenous and treaty rights.

But to make citizenship more inclusive, the government would need to implement, at least partially, its platform commitment in the 2019 and 2021 election platforms to eliminate citizenship fees, a much more substantive measure.

Citizenship, as I have argued in the past, provides a mix of personal and public benefits. 

Applicants personally benefit from the security citizenship provides in terms of mobility and voting rights and the ability to run for office. Canadian society benefits from the “common bond for Canadian-born individuals and naturalized Canadians alike, signifying full membership in Canadian society.” 

This proposed change highlights how the government treats citizenship as a service transaction rather than a substantive unifying and integrating process to help new Canadians feel fully part of Canadian society. That the government has not issued the revised citizenship study guide, announced three ministers ago, is but a further example. 

Canadians, newcomers and old-timers, should raise their concerns with their MPs, regarding this diminishment of citizenship and the integration of new Canadians:

Starting as soon as June, new Canadian citizens could take the oath on their own — without the need for a citizenship judge.

The proposed change is an attempt by immigration officials to reduce processing time and backlogs.

However, critics warn the move would drastically change the decades-old ritual for generations of newcomers and with a click on the keyboard, further dilute the meaning of Canadian citizenship.

“This just further cheapens the significance of becoming a Canadian citizen. It’s just as easy to click terms and conditions to become a citizen as it is to create a Facebook or a TikTok account,” said Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

“That’s really a shame.”

The change, as part of the modernization and digitalization of immigration processing, is expected to reduce the current citizenship processing time by three months to 21 months, according to the plan published in the Canada Gazette over the weekend.

Swearing an oath has been a legal requirement of becoming a citizen in this country since 1947. It’s a solemn vow taken by citizenship applicants to follow the laws of Canada and fulfil their duties as citizens.

Citizenship is not only a milestone for new immigrants toward their belonging and commitment to Canada, it also comes with the benefits of a passport, voting rights and the ability to run for elected office.

Under the proposed change, the immigration minister would have broad discretion to allow citizenship applicants to take the oath by other means and not necessarily before an authorized individual. 

Currently, new citizens swear or affirm the oath before a citizenship judge at virtual or in-person ceremonies, which are mainly scheduled on weekdays, during working hours, although ceremonies are occasionally scheduled on Saturdays. 

“Many clients have to take time off work to attend citizenship ceremonies, and this time off is not necessarily paid by employers,” the immigration department said in the Gazette.

“The flexibility would allow the Department to implement options aimed at improving client service and reducing processing times of citizenship applications.”

The proposed change came in the wake of new data indicating a nosedive in citizenship uptake over 20 years.

The 2021 census found that just 45.7 per cent of permanent residents became citizens within 10 years, down from 60 per cent in 2016 and 75.1 per cent in 2001.

“Citizenship does take a long time, and they’re working on the process,” said Bernhard, whose organization obtained the data. “But the actual problem is not how long it takes to get the citizenship. The actual problem is the desirability of Canadian citizenship itself.”

During the pandemic, citizenship processing time has doubled from the prior 12-month service standard, even though the number of citizenship applications granted annually has risen significantly to 243,000 from 113,000 over the last five years. 

With Canada moving toward bringing in half a million new permanent residents a year by 2025, the inventory of citizenship applications — standing at 358,000 — is expected to grow.

Citizenship applicants must go through a stringent screening process to ensure they meet all requirements, including three out of five years of physical presence in Canada at the time of applying. Those between ages 18 and 54 must also show proficiency in either official language and pass a citizenship exam before they are scheduled for a citizenship ceremony.

Due to COVID, officials have brought in virtual citizenship ceremonies as of April 2020. Since then, 15,290 of the 15,457 ceremonies have been held online in front of an authorized official, generally a citizenship judge.

The “self-administration” of the oath-taking would now allow new citizens to sign a written attestation online without a witness to complete the obligations of citizenship, and applicants would still have the option to do it before a citizenship judge, the immigration department told the Star in an email Monday.

Officials said the measure could result in savings as fewer ceremonies are expected to be hosted.

For Andrew Griffith, a former director general at the immigration department, the change marks another diversion of the federal government in its approach to immigration and citizenship.

“I just look at all of our immigration policies,” said Griffith, now an Environics Institute fellow. “It’s basically the more, the merrier. It’s not about the ability to integrate. It’s just increasing numbers. I can see the logic in terms of you just want to push people through but I always thought that immigration and citizenship was more than that.

“We’re just really further diminishing the value of citizenship.”

The public has 30 days to comment and provide feedback to the proposed regulatory change.

Source: Soon a Canadian citizenship oath could be just a scroll and click away

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Macklin: What happens when Roxham Road is closed

2023/03/01 Leave a comment

Useful commentary as always on some of the likely impacts. However, I am not convinced that all of the asylum seekers at Roxham Road would pursue more risky routes as their risk/benefit calculation would likely lead some not to pursue a more hazardous route.

No way of testing this hypothesis but arguably, many of the Roxham Road asylum seekers are in less desperate situations than those South of the USA border or crossing the Mediterranean.:

The other risk is of course to public support for immigration over this perceived loophole and the perception the government is not managing the border and immigration more generally:

Quebec Premier François Legault, supported by federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, urged the federal government to shut down Roxham Road. This is the spot where, over the past six years, thousands of refugee claimants crossed into Canada and asked for refugee protection. 

The numbers who enter may seem high to some Canadians, but relative to the number of asylum seekers seeking protection in other countries, it is a trickle. It is also a fraction of those we have welcomed from Ukraine in the past year. No one can validly claim to know in advance whether the people who cross at Roxham Road meet the refugee definition, so attempts to distinguish them from Ukrainians on that basis is disingenuous.

The premier of Quebec complains about the alleged unfairness of Quebec bearing costs associated with asylum seekers who enter at Roxham Road. Canada allocates a proportion of federal funding to Quebec for newcomer settlement that is not indexed to the actual number of newcomers that Quebec admits. Quebec receives proportionately more money than other provinces to settle newcomers and does not account for how it spends it. Legault’s claim that Quebec lacks money and capacity to manage Roxham Road arrivals deserves little sympathy. 

Up until 2004, asylum seekers travelling overland would have entered in a safe, orderly way by presenting themselves at an official port of entry at the Canada-U.S. border. Then, the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement turned ports of entry into brick walls for asylum seekers. 

Canada did this by exploiting a loophole in the Refugee Convention, which prohibits states from sending refugees back to countries of origin, but is silent about deflecting them to third countries (in this case, the U.S.). Fast forward a few years, and we discover that some asylum seekers are crossing into Canada at Roxham Road. It is not unlawful for a refugee to enter a country “irregularly” under the Refugee Convention or Canadian immigration law. Refugee law recognizes that desperate people will take desperate measures. 

Roxham Road is an open secret. No one needs a smuggler to find out about it, or to find it. If Roxham Road is blocked, will people become less desperate? Not likely. But they will be forced to take more dangerous and clandestine measures to avoid detection and apprehension. So here are the government programs that politicians are really proposing when they advocate making it legally impossible for asylum seekers to enter Canada:

Job Creation Program for Smugglers: Once prohibited from presenting themselves to Canadian authorities in a safe and orderly way at a port of entry, asylum seekers will increasingly rely on smugglers to guide them into Canada surreptitiously. The smuggling business will grow in response to this government-created demand and become increasingly lucrative, as well as violent and lethal. 

People will pay, and if they don’t have the money, they will borrow it and become indebted to traffickers, who will exploit them. Smuggling will proliferate. We will hear more stories about more people who suffer debilitating injury or freeze to death trying to cross the border from U.S. into Canada or vice versa. Smugglers will be blamed for facilitating border crossing, and for the injuries and deaths that ensue. Wait for it.

Stimulus Package for Military and Security Contractors: Pundits and politicians will demand that Canada invest in surveillance, military and physical infrastructure along a 9,000 km Canada-U.S. border in order to halt the “invasion” of people seeking refugee protection. 

They will describe this as a “humanitarian” program to protect hapless asylum seekers from predation by ruthless smugglers and traffickers. Military and security contractors will line up to proffer their high-tech gadgets and high-priced solutions. Turning a 9,000 km border into a high-tech wall is an expensive, cruel and futile fantasy. The border will be a perpetual crisis zone, where no walls are high enough, no tactics are effective enough, and no amount of money spent is ever enough. Wait for it.

These are the lessons from Fortress Europe and from Australia’s Pacific Solution. Rumours already abound that the Liberals are pressing the United States to somehow “extend” the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement along the full length of the Canadian border. President Biden is proposing a similar rule at its southern border. Wait for it.

Source: Macklin: What happens when Roxham Road is closed

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

IRCC Operational Data – Occupations – Shift toward lower skilled

2023/02/28 Leave a comment

Given a number of public discussions and advocacy for a permanent residency stream for lower-skilled workers, given labour market pressures, exploitation of Temporary Foreign Workers and the bias/preference of immigration programs towards the higher skilled (justified IMO), I spent some time looking at IRCC’s operational data: Canada – Admissions of Permanent Residents 15 years of age or older by Province/Territory and Intended Occupation (4-Digit NOC 2011), January 2015 – December 2022 .

Taking out the “other” and “occupation not stated” categories, about two-thirds of all data, the data shows a shift over this period towards lower skilled: the percentage of highest skilled (NOC A – Occupations usually require university education) had fallen from 50.6% to 37.2%.

The other skilled category, NOC B – Occupations usually require college education, specialized training or apprenticeship training, increased from 34.9% to 38.8%, with more dramatic increases in lower skilled. NOC C – Occupations usually require secondary school and/or occupation-specific training, rose from 7.6% to 15.5%, and NOC D – On-the-job training is usually provided for occupations, rose from 6.0% to 8.1%.

The table below provides the annual details.

20152016201720182019202020212022
A (0, 1)31,08528,66531,40541,13544,29024,62039,92542,815
B (2, 321,43519,90524,29027,50532,18519,85580,27044,680
C (4,5)4,6404,0003,9355,6007,6953,03014,92017,905
D (6,7)3,7003,8254,1955,0305,5353,31511,5059,385
Other152,280166,815164,100175,735180,77597,040188,830229,450
Occupation not stated451003520220150240345
Total stated occupations 61,37556,87064,15579,58590,23051,065146,955115,225
Total213,700223,785228,290255,340271,225148,255336,025345,020
A (0, 1)14.5%12.8%13.8%16.1%16.3%16.6%11.9%12.4%
B (2, 310.0%8.9%10.6%10.8%11.9%13.4%23.9%12.9%
C (4,5)2.2%1.8%1.7%2.2%2.8%2.0%4.4%5.2%
D (6,7)1.7%1.7%1.8%2.0%2.0%2.2%3.4%2.7%
Other71.3%74.5%71.9%68.8%66.7%65.5%56.2%66.5%
Occupation not stated0.0%0.0%0.0%0.0%0.1%0.1%0.1%0.1%
Percentage of stated occupations
A (0, 1)50.6%50.4%49.0%51.7%49.1%48.2%27.2%37.2%
B (2, 334.9%35.0%37.9%34.6%35.7%38.9%54.6%38.8%
C (4,5)7.6%7.0%6.1%7.0%8.5%5.9%10.2%15.5%
D (6,7)6.0%6.7%6.5%6.3%6.1%6.5%7.8%8.1%
A, B85.6%85.4%86.8%86.2%84.8%87.1%81.8%75.9%
C, D13.6%13.8%12.7%13.4%14.7%12.4%18.0%23.7%
IRCC Immigration Occupational Codes Summary

8 of the top 10 occupations that increased the most over this period were NOC C and D, all of which increased by 1,000 percent or more:

4412 – Home support workers, housekeepers and related occupations
6541 – Security guards and related security service occupations
6622 – Store shelf stockers, clerks and order fillers
6611 – Cashiers
0601 – Corporate sales managers
3237 – Other technical occupations in therapy and assessment
7247 – Cable television service and maintenance technicians
9461 – Process control and machine operators, food, beverage and associated products processing
7514 – Delivery and courier service drivers
6623 – Other sales related occupations
Top 10 Immigration Occupations

Another interesting aspect of the data is the relative lack of variation between the various occupational codes as shown in the following table with the last column showing the change 2015 to 2022. For all occupations, the share of NOC A decreases by an average of 12.4 percent or more, with the share of NOC C increasing by an average of 8.2 percent:

2015201620172018201920202021202220152016201720182019202020212022Change 22-15
0 – ManagementA (0, 1)26,32524,32025,97534,85538,05021,50036,05037,67566.0%66.4%65.4%67.1%64.7%64.4%42.1%53.1%-12.9%
B (2, 38,3906,9707,9959,60012,1257,21032,56518,61521.0%19.0%20.1%18.5%20.6%21.6%38.0%26.3%5.2%
C (4,5)1,6451,6351,6402,6053,4251,4457,0008,1004.1%4.5%4.1%5.0%5.8%4.3%8.2%11.4%7.3%
D (6,7)3,5003,7254,0854,9005,2053,21510,1006,5008.8%10.2%10.3%9.4%8.9%9.6%11.8%9.2%0.4%
Total39,86036,65039,69551,96058,80533,37085,71570,890100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
1 – Business & AdminA (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80063.9%64.4%64.3%66.9%64.7%64.4%41.0%52.2%-11.8%
B (2, 310,0058,65510,27512,19515,0659,28040,77522,74024.9%23.7%26.2%24.0%26.2%28.5%47.5%32.2%7.3%
C (4,5)2,3102,1652,0552,9453,6451,5107,3158,4355.8%5.9%5.2%5.8%6.3%4.6%8.5%12.0%6.2%
D (6,7)2,1602,1651,6501,6651,5958002,5452,5755.4%5.9%4.2%3.3%2.8%2.5%3.0%3.6%-1.7%
Total40,13036,52039,19550,83057,50032,54085,80570,550100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
2 – Sciences A (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80063.1%63.0%63.1%66.6%64.5%63.9%40.6%52.6%-10.5%
B (2, 311,26010,04011,52012,99515,6459,65042,08522,66527.7%26.9%28.8%25.4%27.1%29.4%48.5%32.4%4.7%
C (4,5)1,6051,5901,5602,4403,2451,3756,9057,9503.9%4.3%3.9%4.8%5.6%4.2%8.0%11.4%7.4%
D (6,7)2,1602,1651,6501,6651,5958002,5452,5755.3%5.8%4.1%3.3%2.8%2.4%2.9%3.7%-1.6%
Total40,68037,33039,94551,12557,68032,77586,70569,990100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
3 – HealthA (0, 1)27,46525,47027,90536,65539,04521,69535,99038,15068.3%69.7%71.2%73.5%70.3%70.5%45.3%55.4%-13.0%
B (2, 38,6907,0557,8308,85511,3306,75532,55518,19021.6%19.3%20.0%17.8%20.4%22.0%41.0%26.4%4.8%
C (4,5)1,8701,8701,7802,6953,5451,5058,3109,9754.7%5.1%4.5%5.4%6.4%4.9%10.5%14.5%9.8%
D (6,7)2,1602,1651,6501,6651,5958002,5452,5755.4%5.9%4.2%3.3%2.9%2.6%3.2%3.7%-1.6%
Total40,18536,56039,16549,87055,51530,75579,40068,890100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
4 – Education  & GovtA (0, 1)28,60525,94527,95537,67541,58523,32538,22540,59068.6%68.8%70.0%72.4%68.5%69.3%44.6%54.7%-13.9%
B (2, 38,4457,3107,9609,22512,1357,28034,52019,35520.2%19.4%19.9%17.7%20.0%21.6%40.2%26.1%5.8%
C (4,5)2,5052,2652,3953,5055,4202,25510,50011,7006.0%6.0%6.0%6.7%8.9%6.7%12.2%15.8%9.8%
D (6,7)2,1602,1651,6501,6651,5958002,5452,5755.2%5.7%4.1%3.2%2.6%2.4%3.0%3.5%-1.7%
Total41,71537,68539,96052,07060,73533,66085,79074,220100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
5 – Arts culture & SportA (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80067.5%67.8%68.3%71.1%68.4%68.3%44.9%55.7%-11.8%
B (2, 38,5957,4308,5159,75512,3257,53033,75018,73522.6%21.4%23.1%20.4%22.7%24.6%43.1%28.4%5.8%
C (4,5)1,6051,5901,5602,4403,2451,3756,9057,9504.2%4.6%4.2%5.1%6.0%4.5%8.8%12.0%7.8%
D (6,7)2,1602,1651,6501,6651,5958002,5452,5755.7%6.2%4.5%3.5%2.9%2.6%3.2%3.9%-1.8%
Total38,01534,72036,94047,88554,36030,65578,37066,060100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
6 – Sales and serviceA (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80065.1%66.1%65.4%67.6%64.7%64.6%40.2%50.3%-14.8%
B (2, 39,3057,9759,76511,67514,7709,05040,97022,18523.6%22.4%25.3%23.2%25.7%27.9%46.8%30.3%6.7%
C (4,5)2,1151,8801,8652,8703,7051,5407,7459,1655.4%5.3%4.8%5.7%6.4%4.8%8.8%12.5%7.2%
D (6,7)2,3102,2151,7351,7701,8608753,6904,9655.9%6.2%4.5%3.5%3.2%2.7%4.2%6.8%0.9%
Total39,38535,60538,58050,34057,53032,41587,57573,115100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
7 – Trades, transport and equipment operatorsA (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80064.3%65.8%67.2%70.8%67.9%68.7%42.3%53.4%-10.9%
B (2, 310,3658,3459,0059,86512,6457,31537,91020,41026.0%23.3%24.0%20.5%23.1%24.0%45.6%29.6%3.6%
C (4,5)1,7051,7051,6002,4853,2901,3907,4408,9004.3%4.8%4.3%5.2%6.0%4.6%8.9%12.9%8.6%
D (6,7)2,1852,2001,6751,6851,6358202,6752,8205.5%6.1%4.5%3.5%3.0%2.7%3.2%4.1%-1.4%
Total39,91035,78537,49548,06054,76530,47583,19568,930100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
8 – Natural resources, agricultureA (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80068.2%68.8%70.2%72.7%69.7%70.2%46.0%56.3%-11.9%
B (2, 38,0806,8657,4208,54011,1756,67531,67517,62521.5%20.1%20.6%18.2%20.9%22.4%41.4%27.0%5.5%
C (4,5)1,7401,6651,6552,6003,4001,4107,0708,2854.6%4.9%4.6%5.6%6.4%4.7%9.2%12.7%8.1%
D (6,7)2,1602,1651,6501,6651,6008002,5852,6455.7%6.3%4.6%3.6%3.0%2.7%3.4%4.0%-1.7%
Total37,63534,23035,94046,83053,37029,83576,50065,355100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
9 – Manufacturing and utilitiesA (0, 1)25,65523,53525,21534,02537,19520,95035,17036,80068.1%69.0%70.0%72.3%69.2%70.0%45.3%55.7%-12.4%
B (2, 37,8256,4557,2758,37510,9556,57532,01517,47520.8%18.9%20.2%17.8%20.4%22.0%41.2%26.5%5.7%
C (4,5)1,9851,9451,8652,9753,9801,6007,8758,9955.3%5.7%5.2%6.3%7.4%5.3%10.1%13.6%8.4%
D (6,7)2,1852,1801,6501,6701,6158052,6352,7555.8%6.4%4.6%3.5%3.0%2.7%3.4%4.2%-1.6%
Total37,65034,11536,00547,04553,74529,93077,69566,025100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%100.0%
Immigration NOC Codes breakdown by skill level and occupation.

Unfortunately, WordPress tables do not allow table formatting so if interested, will send the spreadsheets on request. Pdf below:

immigration-noc-codes-en_odp-pr-provnoc4Download

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Ram: Can ideology-detecting algorithms catch online extremism before it takes hold?

2023/02/28 Leave a comment

Intriguing. Likely the same techniques could be used with respect religiously-inspired extremism and “woke” extremism:

Ideology has always been a critical element in understanding how we view the world, form opinions and make political decisions. 

However, the internet has revolutionised the way opinions and ideologies spread, leading to new forms of online radicalisation. Far-right ideologies, which advocate for ultra-nationalism, racism and opposition to immigration and multiculturalism, have proliferated on social platforms.

These ideologies have strong links with violence and terrorism. In recent years, as much as 40% of the caseload of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was related to far-right extremism. This has declined, though, with the easing of COVID restrictions.

Detecting online radicalisation early could help prevent far-right ideology-motivated (and potentially violent) activity. To this end, we have developed a completely automatic system that can determine the ideology of social media users based on what they do online.

How it works

Our proposed pipeline is based on detecting the signals of ideology from people’s online behaviour. 

There is no way to directly observe a person’s ideology. However, researchers can observe “ideological proxies” such as the use of political hashtags, retweeting politicians and following political parties. 

But using ideological proxies requires a lot of work: you need experts to understand and label the relationships between proxies and ideology. This can be expensive and time-consuming. 

What’s more, online behaviour and contexts change between countries and social platforms. They also shift rapidly over time. This means even more work to keep your ideological proxies up to date and relevant.

You are what you post

Our pipeline simplifies this process and makes it automatic. It has two main components: a “media proxy”, which determines ideology via links to media, and an “inference architecture”, which helps us determine the ideology of people who don’t post links to media.

The media proxy measures the ideological leaning of an account by tracking which media sites it posts links to. Posting links to Fox News would indicate someone is more likely to lean right, for example, while linking to the Guardian indicates a leftward tendency. 

To categorise the media sites users link to, we took the left-right ratings for a wide range of news sites from two datasets (though many are available). One was based on a Reuters survey and the other curated by experts at Allsides.com. 

This works well for people who post links to media sites. However, most people don’t do that very often. So what do we do about them?

That’s where the inference architecture comes in. In our pipeline, we determine how ideologically similar people are to one another with three measures: the kind of language they use, the hashtags they use, and the other users whose content they reshare.

Measuring similarity in hashtags and resharing is relatively straightforward, but such signals are not always available. Language use is the key: it is always present, and a known indicator of people’s latent psychological states. 

Using machine-learning techniques we found that people with different ideologies use different kinds of language. 

Right-leaning individuals tend to use moral language relating to vice (for example, harm, cheating, betrayal, subversion and degradation), as opposed to virtue (care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity), more than left-leaning individuals. Far-right individuals use grievance language (involving violence, hate and paranoia) significantly more than moderates. 

By detecting these signals of ideology, our pipeline can identify and understand the psychological and social characteristics of extreme individuals and communities.

What’s next?

The ideology detection pipeline could be a crucial tool for understanding the spread of far-right ideologies and preventing violence and terrorism. By detecting signals of ideology from user behaviour online, the pipeline serves as an early warning systems for extreme ideology-motivated activity. It can provide law enforcement with methods to flag users for investigation and intervene before radicalisation takes hold.

Source: Ram: Can ideology-detecting algorithms catch online extremism before it takes hold?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

USA: Black farmers worry new approach on “race neutral” lending leaves them in the shadows

2023/02/28 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion from both the substantive perspective (righting historical discrimination) and the politics that broadened eligibility and arguably entrenched discrimination:

Farmers of color across the country, who’d been promised debt cancelation as part of a special program to address racial disparity in lending, rejoiced when they received letters in 2021 in the mail that said their loans with the Agriculture Department would be canceled.

And then, for over a year, there was nothing.

Multiple lawsuits led by white farmers, who said the program discriminated against them for being white, stymied the race-targeted program.

The debt forgiveness was a congressional effort to help USDA make up for a history of discrimination. For decades, farmers of color have filed individual lawsuits, class action lawsuits and congressional testimony against the department. And for decades, rulings and reports have repeatedly concluded that USDA’s lending practices have been discriminatory.

Now, USDA is in the process of rolling out a second, newer, program passed by Congress as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But the $3.1 billion now appropriated as payments toward loans don’t just go to racial and ethnic minorities. They also go to some white farmers under a new category: “economically distressed.”

Economically distressed means farmers of any race who are behind on loan payments or on the brink of foreclosure.

And since this new program is now race-neutral, those who are particularly concerned about the disparate impact of lending practices on Black and other farmers of color say the move could hide the scope of the problem and lead to further disenfranchisement.

Farmers of color wonder if relief is being received as intended

In October, USDA began making automatic payments to the accounts of farmers who were 60 days or more delinquent. In some cases, payments were made without notifying the borrower: a pleasant surprise in some cases and procedural confusion in others.

However, advocates and producers complain there is a lack of clarity and transparency about who is getting the money.

“You lose a lot of the trust when there was very little trust in the beginning,” said Brandon Smith, a cattle rancher in Texas who received a payment and is an outreach coordinator for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund. “No one’s trying to be ungrateful, but it’s just the trust and what was promised to them.”

As of Jan. 30, the USDA paid out more than $823 million for the Inflation Reduction Act program to farmers who were either delinquent on payments or on the verge of foreclosure.

“The steps we’ve taken so far are really for lack of a better analogy, to stop the bleeding,” said Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of the Farm Service Agency, the lending arm of the department.

He said the next step is to deal with 15,600 “complex cases,” including borrowers on the brink of foreclosure and those near delinquency.

“As far as I know, we haven’t had any foreclosures in our guaranteed loans since we started providing this assistance. That’s an ongoing process to clean up those complex cases,” Ducheneaux said. “And, of course, having a bankruptcy judge and other creditors make those even more complex.”

This case-by-case funding will include some $500 million in payments.

USDA has not outlined what it will do with the remaining over $1 billion allocated by Congress.

States with “Economically distressed borrowers” net high dollars

Data obtained by NPR show that Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Puerto Rico are receiving the largest amounts of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act towards economically distressed borrowers.

Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas also happen to be the largest states for FSA lending for what USDA labels “socially disadvantaged” producers – which are people of color and white women. Oklahoma leads the way in lending to those types of borrowers.

These were also the states that were expected to benefit the most from the original race-targeted program.

It is unclear, however, how many of these “socially disadvantaged” borrowers are people of color.

In the state of Oklahoma, out of 129,619 total producers in Oklahoma, 9.2% are American Indian/Alaska Native and 1.4% are Black or African American, and .4% Asian compared to 84.9% white, according to the self-reported 2017 Agriculture Census.

Puerto Rico, which has not recovered from the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017, also has a large percentage of socially disadvantaged borrowers.

It has a farming population of 8,230 of which 7% identify as Black, 90% identify as white, .8% as other and 1% as more than one race, according to the self-reported 2017 Census of Agriculture. About 99%, regardless of race, identify as Hispanic or Latino ethnic origin, making them socially disadvantaged.

“Economically, they are (also) disadvantaged. That’s not surprising to me,” said Iris Jannett Rodriguez, president of the coffee sector of the Puerto Rican Farm Bureau. “Many farms might have a lot of land but the land that is producing crops is really small.”

Almost any way you slice the numbers: looking at raw totals of borrowers and dollars, or average payments per borrower or loan, Puerto Rico – which is not among the nation’s top agriculture producers – consistently lands among the top recipients. With 820 direct loan borrowers receiving $72.3 million and two guaranteed loan borrowers receiving $1.3 million in payments, Puerto Rico ranks fourth in the nation for highest borrowers and IRA payments.

“Both Oklahoma and Puerto Rico have a large share of farm loans. Therefore, it is not surprising that they also have more distressed borrowers relative to other states,” said Marissa Perry, press secretary for USDA regarding the rates of payments made toward both states. “In the case of Puerto Rico, in recent years, a number of natural disasters have contributed to delinquencies.”

But advocates say they fear the money may now not be reaching all of the producers who benefited from the first program.

USDA officials say that since Congress did not make race a consideration for payments, it does not track that data. Nonetheless, some patterns stick out because some of the states with the highest number of USDA loan borrowers who are socially disadvantaged are getting the most of the IRA payments.

As a part of the American Rescue Plan, the early 2020 pandemic relief bill, lawmakers approved $5 billion toward debt relief and cancellation for minority farmers. The legislation was specifically targeting what was labeled “socially disadvantaged” farmers, or African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Pacific Islanders.

But the program was swiftly blocked by about 12 lawsuits, including one out of Texas led by former President Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller and current state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. They argued the program was discriminating against white farmers for being white.

Lawmakers then repealed the program and passed a second one through the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was absolutely a tough pill to swallow with regard to the overturning of American Rescue Plan [program],” said Dãnia Davy, director of Land Retention and Advocacy at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, however adding that some results have benefited her membership. “I have to say that a lot of our farmers ultimately have been very positive as they’ve received benefits under the Inflation Reduction Act that some folks didn’t even anticipate receiving. So it’s actually been a surprisingly positive response.”

The first program was specifically supposed to provide redress to farmers of color, many of who had been a part of class action lawsuits against USDA. Plaintiffs under Pigford v. Glickman, the lawsuit brought by Black farmers settled in 1999. However, tens of thousands missed out due to confusing paperwork and filing deadlines and near attorney malpractice, advocates say.

In 2010, Congress appropriated an additional $1.2 billion in a second round of payouts. But still, many did not receive them due to more denials of claims and deadline and processing issues. Plaintiffs fell even further behind on payments and legal fees — hurting their credit and bottom line for decades to follow.

“There are people who are still living from the first round of Pigford and they’ve never been made whole,” Davy said. “And a lot of times when people talk about Pigford, they think that Pigford addressed all of the racial discrimination that Black farmers faced, but it was really for a finite period of time.”

Smith says producers are happy about payments but upset there isn’t full loan forgiveness and confused about the rollout.

“They feel robbed about that part,” Smith said. “The law was passed almost six months ago and it seems like they [USDA] are a little sluggish.”

Much of the money remains to be doled out.

Smith said farmers who received notice in 2021 that their debt would be forgiven sat in limbo for a year, leading to many of them feeling like the department slow-walked the rollout of the original program, giving time for lawsuits to stall it.

“They were promised something by the government and then put on hold for over a year and a half,” Smith said. “They were told money was allocated to them during the pandemic. They were not able to use those funds. Now the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, they added more money to that pool but they aren’t doing debt forgiveness. They just had a couple of payments.”

In response to the concerns, USDA said they worked quickly to dole out the funds to farmers most at risk of losing their farms. The department is now in a more complicated phase, it said.

“This work requires diligence and time to make sure we are doing right by producers and fundamentally changing our approach to be better and in a long-lasting way,” said Dewayne Goldmon, senior advisor for racial equity to the Secretary of Agriculture. “I’m in this job to advance racial justice and opportunity – and we will keep mending and improving our approach at USDA to ensure Black farmers and any other farmers who have been left behind in the past are no longer left behind.”

Black farmers’ concerns over equity remain

Still, some farmers of color argue that they have still not benefited from a program originally designed to help them.

Eddie Lewis, a farmer in Louisiana, said he falls into that “complex case” category — he is delinquent $600,000. While he was poised to receive cancellation under the first program, the delay to get any payment under the new program is affecting his ability to get the capital he needs, he said.

“I would be the perfect candidate for a case-by-case basis. I’m a good farmer. I got good yields, I got good character. I got good credit,” he said. Lewis is in limbo, unable to secure other loans he needs because of the outstanding delinquency.

Advocates are also concerned that Black farmers who led the movement to get a debt-relief program will be left out of it.

In June 2022, Rep. Alma Adams, a North Carolina Democratic member of the House Agriculture Committee, sent a letter to USDA asking them to use money appropriated in another section of the COVID-19 relief package, also aimed at tackling inequity, to cover the costs of debt to Black farmers while litigation on the debt relief program continued.

Adams argued that according to USDA data, only 3,100 Black farmers would be eligible for the relief totaling less than $300 million. The most recent FSA report released in September shows the cost of 5,970 loans taken out by “socially disadvantaged farmers,” including white women, was $1.2 billion.

Advocates say the amount needed to cover the debt of farmers of color, and especially Black farmers, is so small that the funding should be appropriated — especially out of a multibillion-dollar program.

“Unfortunately, our folks have been so shortchanged that I think the numbers will probably bear out that there’s still a significant number of white farmers who not only benefited from the subsidies and the COVID benefits but now even IRA,” Davy said. “I think that program can’t truly be called a success for civil rights because you have to really intentionally address racial discrimination if you want to call it a success for civil rights.”

However, other farmers argue that the new, race-neutral program may be better at providing aid to those immediately struggling without triggering lawsuits. And many of them happen to be farmers of color.

In defense of the original race-targeted program, the government argued in court that white farmers were far less likely to be delinquent on their loans. The ratio of white borrowers who are delinquent on FSA loans in 2021 was 11%, compared to 38% of Black borrowers, 15% of Asian borrowers, 17% of American Indian and Alaskan Natives, and 68% of Hispanic borrowers.

Rod Simmons, a farmer in North Carolina, at first struggled with the department. He cited familiar problems, like a confusing application process and deadlines, as barriers he faced getting involved with the department’s programs.

When the pandemic hit, he lost 22% of his inventory. He was on the verge of liquidating his assets in order to get money to make the loan payments And then the Inflation Reduction Act loan payment came through, it amounted to two years worth of money he owed.

“My granddad had never seen any type of program in his time that made an impact for farmers like this one did,” Simmons said. “Now, the programs can be designed in a manner that will cater to those that need it versus those that want it. And there’s a big difference.”

Source: Black farmers worry new approach on “race neutral” lending leaves them in the shadows

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Skuterud: Canada’s worker ‘shortage’ is an illusion, and bringing in cheap labour doesn’t help

2023/02/27 Leave a comment

Needed commentary:

If your inclination in hearing about Canada’s labour shortage crisis is to ask, “Where did all the workers go?” you have the wrong economic model in mind.

Despite our aging population, the percentage of Canadian adults participating in the labour force was 65.7 per cent last month, identical to what it was in October, 2018, and July, 2016, after accounting for usual seasonal variations.

In terms of absolute numbers, Canada’s labour force now stands at 20.8 million workers, the largest it has ever been.

Rather than not enough workers, the issue is that the prices of the goods and services that workers produce have increased faster than their wages, motivating businesses to hire more workers and sell more.

Canada’s current tight labour markets overwhelmingly reflect increases in the demand for workers, not a decline in their numbers. And the solution is not to satiate that demand with cheap labour, which undermines labour productivity and average economic living standards in the population.

Why do so many people interpret current labour shortages as “not enough workers”? It is because in their minds the jobs that need to be done in our economy are fixed and the job of policy makers is to make sure there are enough workers to fill all the slots, so the economy does not fall apart.

But employers’ demands for workers are constantly fluctuating and evolving in response to factors within the economy, including relative prices, interest rates, technological advances and consumers’ preferences and incomes.

In 1921, one-third of Canada’s workers were employed in agriculture. After more than 100 years of innovation in farming equipment, less than 2 per cent are.

Very few jobs, if any, are truly essential.

Once we recognize that the jobs employers seek to fill in the economy are fluid, it all becomes clear.

Throughout this pandemic era, I have been tracking Canadian labour-market tightness, measured as the number of job vacancies per available job seeker. After hovering between 0.2 and 0.6 in the 2015-20 period, the ratio surged in January, 2021, and peaked at 1.1 job vacancies for every job seeker in June, 2022.

It is not a coincidence that this increase in labour-market tightness lines up precisely with movements in the relative prices of the goods and services that businesses sell and the wages that workers are paid.

Canada’s headline inflation rate – Statistics Canada’s measure of the annual change in consumer prices – stood at 1 per cent in January, 2021, but increased rapidly, peaking at 7.9 per cent in June, 2022.

After accounting for changes in the mix of jobs, I estimate that workers’ wages were growing at an annual rate of 1.7 per cent in January, 2021, which sluggishly increased to 3.7 per cent by June, 2022, far behind the pace of increases in consumer prices.

In other words, workers’ wages have not kept pace with the prices of the goods and services they produce and consume.

Workers aren’t disappearing; what’s happened is employers’ profit incentives to hire more workers have increased dramatically.

And as the gap between the growth in consumer prices and workers’ wages diminished after June, 2022, so did the hiring appetite of Canadian businesses. With one exception, the number of job vacancies declined in every month between May and November, 2022, resulting in a 21-per-cent reduction in total job vacancies in six months.

In November, 2022, the most recent data we have, there were 0.8 job vacancies for every job seeker, down from the June peak of 1.1.

No doubt, Canadian labour-market tightness remains elevated, making life difficult for some businesses. Competing for scarce workers with other businesses and retaining the ones you have requires improving wages and working conditions, which eats into profit margins. And where competition is especially fierce, it can pose existential risks.

But business failures are a healthy feature of a well-functioning economy. Starting a new business is necessarily risky. It ensures scarce capital is invested where its expected returns are highest and that the businesses that survive are the ones that utilize their workers most efficiently by, for example, investing in new technologies to maximize employee productivity.

These competitive pressures are not a good thing for businesses struggling to turn a profit, and those businesses will plead for government support.

But not coddling the business lobby by, for example, expanding wage-subsidy programs or easing access to low-skilled temporary foreign workers, including foreign students, is good for worker productivity, workers’ wages and average economic living standards.

Mikal Skuterud is a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo and the director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum.

Source: Canada’s worker ‘shortage’ is an illusion, and bringing in cheap labour doesn’t help

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