Critical considerations for the future of the public service

2023/02/20 Leave a comment

Hard to argue with the principles enunciated but perhaps even harder to think that this would result in meaningful change (which is hard given ministerial and bureaucratic roles and perspectives). The track record of previous reform efforts is not encouraging…:

In a December 2022 column in Policy Options, “Canada needs a royal commission to fix problems with the federal public service,” Kathryn May conveyed Donald Savoie’s reluctant call for a royal commission to explore the state of the Canadian public service and its future direction. Many different reasons were highlighted. The public service is overloaded, relying on slow and outdated processes. There has been rapid growth after COVID and yet – despite an arguably quick pivot to implement government policies – it has been slow to handle the demand for essential services. It also seems incapable of responding in a timely manner to access-to-information requests despite politicians’ trumpeting of “open government.”

We could also add that there are long-held concerns about top public servants being too responsive to the government of the day, along with central agencies micro-managing and contributing to the centralization of power in the Prime Minister’s Office. There have been concerns about declining or insufficient skills or resources, and over-reliance on consultants and human resource practices that have led to a risk-averse culture.

These issues are concerning and deserve attention, but a royal commission would not be a productive way to resolve them. Instead, implementing a review process that’s designed correctly from the beginning is important. That means striking a balance between the political side and the department leadership, regional representatives and public servants, aided by some external perspective. Perhaps most importantly, the first phase needs to be taking stock of the changes that have occurred since the pandemic especially, and understanding the motivations for change while assessing gaps in capabilities and opportunities for reform.

Why the lack of enthusiasm for a comprehensive review?

There have been more than 20 federal reviews and reform efforts since 1867, each with their own attributes. Phil Charko and Stephen Van Dinehave identified several initiatives since the 1980s. Recent initiatives such as Blueprint 2020 and Beyond2020, were not, in fact, “blueprints,” but invitations to “experiment” in a “bottom-up” way, with no systematic reporting about how the contours and capabilities of the public service and its organizations were evolving.

Likewise, former prime minister Stephen Harper’s embedded strategic and operational reviews (2010-15) were efforts to reduce costs and rethink specific lines of business internally, not efforts to reimagine the overall management of the public service. In short, there has been neither stock-taking nor a rethink of the direction of the public service overall.

One could conclude that political and public service leaders have been disinterested or unaware of the need for reform, but some former Privy Council clerks (for example, Paul Tellier and Michael Wernick) have been among those issuing calls for reform – sometimes after they left the public service. There are also calls for reform coming from academics or civil society that are difficult to ignore.

A more generous interpretation is that political and public service leaders are too focused on immediate policy priorities with few resources to call for a wide-ranging assessment. Or, like Savoie, they may experience the issues and see the need for reform but have reservations about the merits of relying on a royal commission. Indeed, they have not considered alternatives other than centrally driven, closely held senior-led approaches.

The fact is that the public service is aware of its challenges. Countless internal and external reports have provided direction for needed reforms and when given political and financial support, they can be innovative and accomplish a great deal (look to Citizens First as an example).

Most issues and frustrations are not new, but the call for sustained action and continuous reflection is more urgent than ever. However, even if largely self-managed by the public service and its leaders, concerted reform requires the interest and support of prime ministers, as well as responding to recommendations in a timely way.

Why not a royal commission?

Royal commissions vary in size and scope, are usually convened outside government and are given a mandate and budget. Commissioners are appointed, reflecting their scope, who then refine and operationalize their mandates and appoint staff, commission research, receive submissions, and hold hearings. Sometimes public servants are seconded to assist, and often scholars and experts are asked to provide advice and undertake research. The entity works apart from the public service and can take on a life of its own. It is more of a topical treatment than a cure.

Moreover, though often quoted, royal commissions seldom show tangible results in actual public service reforms or behavioural change. They are excellent for spotting or tapping into talent, developing new advisory networks, consolidating knowledge and identifying new approaches and generating new ideas.

However, given the changing political environment and working in a social-media environment, governments have not been willing to convene royal commissions. Instead, public inquiries have been the preferred approach – and only if there has been a serious failure or scandal such as the Gomery Inquiry or the Phoenix pay system.

Aside from the mechanics of how to better deliver on its responsibilities, what has not taken place since the 1960 Glassco Commission is an analysis of the organization and delivery changes in public responsibilities. This seems important in the wake of the pandemic.

An understanding of how programs and the public service have evolved, an appraisal of recent practices, new ideas about future directions and removing barriers for transformation is needed. Given the pace of change and the institutional limitations, royal commissions, blue-ribbon panels and task forces are unlikely to be accepted nor perceived as useful internally if they are regarded as one-time initiatives. Likewise, a top-down internal approach modeled on PS2000 (1989) or LaRelève (1997) will not generate the legitimacy and commitment from public servants.

What are some considerations for ongoing review?

Several key elements are critical for reviewing how the public service has evolved and what needs to happen next. The design must acknowledge the realities of working in and around public services, how change takes place and what is required to anchor it over time. These include:

1. Institutional complexity. The federal public service is extremely large, with more than 80 departments and agencies employing approximately 320,000 people in 2020 – a number that is expected to increase to more than 400,000 by 2025. An overly centralized approach is likely to be met with resistance, if not outright rejection. The public service is disparate, disaggregated and decentralized. The process must anticipate the differences in mandates, responsibilities, structures and cultures, and at what level changes or reforms are needed.

2. Engaging the diversity of public-service talent. Public servants from various areas must be engaged and must participate. Different competencies will be needed to understand change and reform efforts while taking advantage of central versus regional perspectives.

3. Tapping into external perspectives. Practitioners leading the initiative may need to heed various external perspectives. For example, including the beneficiaries of programs and services could help to understand the changing nature of relationships with vulnerable communities, the shifting boundaries between public and private, and the interconnectedness of jurisdictions and responsibilities. Current efforts to address public health reforms is a good example.

4. Anticipating how reform actually takes place. Few believe that top-down reforms or “fixes” will have much impact on behaviours. Change and innovation stem from meeting governmental priorities as expressed by ministers through mandate letters or other directives. These should determine how departments and agencies organize themselves if accompanied with appropriate financial and political support, and related accountabilities.

5. Effective reform is ongoing. This is about developing an approach to reform that requires introducing new operational repertoires dependent on data for evidence-based decision-making. Instead of one-time exercises, ongoing reviews must be built into routines with a learning focus that feeds departmental plans.

6. The need for political attention, monitoring and reporting. No approach will be effective if efforts are not properly monitored so that public servants can visualize real-time shifts by leaders and the implications for their place in these changes.

In short, forward-looking decisions must be undertaken that balance the perspectives of politicians and staffers, public service leaders, regional bodies, rank-and-file public servants, and concerned and affected citizens. The way forward is to move away from subjective and sporadic reform efforts to a routine system that generates institutional learning based on ongoing evidence. This will take significant commitment to create but may generate the momentum needed that previous reform efforts could not sustain. For the present, however, an initial analysis of changes occurring, understanding motivations for change, assessing gaps in capabilities, identifying opportunities for reform and future needs should be undertaken – and be done quickly with clear steps throughout.

Source: Critical considerations for the future of the public service

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

Cosh: The Incredibly Exploding Canada

2023/02/18 Leave a comment

More on the wake-up cry on immigration related to housing availability and affordability.

But why Cosh or his editors have to include a juvenile aside on the Globe “inferior national newspaper,” in general and at a time of Postmedia cuts, is beyond me:

It seems like only a few weeks since us newspaper halfwits were trying to absorb the astonishing news that the population of Canada had grown almost one per cent in three months. (“A few” turns out to mean “eight.”) In the meantime, nobody in Canada’s press has said very much about a Jan. 25 economics memorandum from the CIBC’s Benjamin Tal, which carries a somewhat disturbing message: we ain’t seen nothing yet. 

Tal’s concern is how we analyze the immediate future of housing markets in Canada. Newspapermen focus, perhaps naturally, on the headline details of federal-government targets for new permanent residents. These are already being increased at full throttle, with universal approval from the general public: new permanent resident (NPR) approvals are expected to hit 465,000 in 2023. Does this mean we need to somehow create housing (to say nothing of other infrastructure and social resources) for 465,000 new people and then more each year going forward? 

Well, the good news is that the answer to that question is “no.” Many new permanent residents are people who were already living in the country as students or temporary workers. While international travel was choked off during the pandemic, most new permanent residents were people already here, and so immigration figures didn’t represent new demand for housing and other socioeconomic supports. 

But this changed in 2022, which accounts for the remarkable spike in the observed population. Most new permanent residents last year came from outside the country, and this was coupled with a surge in arrivals of non-permanent residents, including about 140,000 Ukrainians who took immediate advantage of the humanitarian Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program. CUAET includes a three-year, more-or-less-unconditional work visa. 

The Ukrainians are merely a small part of this story, but they provide a hint as to why NPR numbers are more volatile and harder to forecast than the permanent-resident approvals, which are relatively easy for the federal government to enumerate and limit. Even as Ottawa crowbars the permanent resident-based immigration mainstream ever wider, industry is demanding more permits for temporary workers (don’t you know there’s a labour shortage?) and universities are frantically trying to rebuild their international student numbers. Actual NPR arrivals to Canada jumped from 258,000 in 2021 to at least 700,000 in 2022, Tal thinks. 

I hardly need to add that, this being Canada, reaching this estimate required digging into customized data from the immigration department. “Official published sources” don’t break down new permanent residents into “already here” and “newly arriving,” and Statistics Canada’s population projections have a habit of underestimating future NPR flows. 

“Together,” Tal concludes, net “permanent residents and NPR arrivals from outside Canada in 2022 amounted to an estimated 955,000, representing an unprecedented swing in housing demand in a single year that is currently not fully reflected in official figures.” He goes on to remind the reader that 340,000 Ukrainian holders of approved CUAET visas have not yet come to Canada, and there is a backlog of another 300,000 applications that haven’t been looked at. (The war in Ukraine, one should add, shows no sign of immediately ending; and who knows what unforeseen conflicts might inspire the creation of a second or third or nth emergency visa program?) 

Meanwhile, if you believe the inferior national newspaper, the feds are considering dealing with their notorious and awful immigration backlog by slashing the Gordian knot of visitor visas, waiving the eligibility rules for those and rubber-stamping 500,000 applications all in one wad. This would help Canadian tourism and conference organizing a great deal — but it would also be likely to send that unpredictable “net arrivals” figure through the roof. The discussion memorandum obtained by the Globe, let us note, explicitly considered the possibility that this might be best done in secret without an official announcement.

Source: Cosh: The Incredibly Exploding Canada

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

B.C. Liberal MLA the latest politician with mixed messaging for non-English media

2023/02/18 Leave a comment

Warning to all:
British Columbia Liberal leader Kevin Falcon says he supports supervised drug injection sites, but when member of the legislature Teresa Wat spoke to the audience of a Mandarin news show last week, she had a different message.
Wat, speaking on Phoenix TV’s Daily Topic Show, said “we are very opposed to so-called safe injection sites,” remarks she later said “accidentally misrepresented” her party’s position.

Source: B.C. Liberal MLA the latest politician with mixed messaging for non-English media

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Rents Are Soaring in Canada as Surge of People Goes Undercounted

2023/02/18 Leave a comment

Good article and analysis.

Emblemic of the “undercounting” is that the Immigration Levels Plan does not include temporary residents (workers and students), an oversight that many are noticing given the rapid rise in their number over the past 20 years.

Housing availability and affordability is the most obvious Achilles Heel of the government’s approach but there healthcare and infrastructure are also significant:

Canada’s explosive population growth from immigration is causing rents to surge in its biggest cities. And there’s another problem: The country isn’t even properly counting the number of people who need homes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government plans to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents this year, and increase the annual target to half a million by 2025. But those often-cited numbers understate the pressure on the country’s limited supply of housing —because they don’t include a wave of foreign students, temporary workers and others with non-permanent visas.

The country actually had close to 1 million international arrivals last year, according to an analysis by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce that’s based on other data, including visas. It will probably accept a similar number this year, said Benjamin Tal, the bank’s deputy chief economist.

Apartment Rents Are Soaring in Canada’s Cities

Rent increases for two-bedroom apartments, year-over-year

As a result, Canada is experiencing its fastest population growth since the 1970s, and apartments have become extremely hard to find. The vacancy rate on rental buildings is below 2%, the lowest since 2001. In Vancouver, it’s less than 1%. The situation is made worse by rising interest rates that have made buying a home unaffordable for many people, pushing them into the market for rental properties.

Source: Rents Are Soaring in Canada as Surge of People Goes Undercounted

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Paul: In Defense of J.K. Rowling

2023/02/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

“Trans people need and deserve protection.”

“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others but are vulnerable.”

“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.”

“I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.”

These statements were written by J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series, a human-rights activist and — according to a noisy fringe of the internet and a number of powerful transgender rights activists and L.G.B.T.Q. lobbying groups — a transphobe.

Even many of Rowling’s devoted fans have made this accusation. In 2020, The Leaky Cauldron, one of the biggest “Harry Potter” fan sites, claimed that Rowling had endorsed “harmful and disproven beliefs about what it means to be a transgender person,” letting members know it would avoid featuring quotes from and photos of the author.

Other critics have advocated that bookstores pull her books from the shelves, and some bookstores have done so. She has also been subjected to verbal abuse, doxxing and threats of sexual and other physical violence, including death threats.

Now,  in rare and wide-ranging interviews for the podcast series “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” which begins next week, Rowling is sharing her experiences. “I have had direct threats of violence, and I have had people coming to my house where my kids live, and I’ve had my address posted online,” she says in one of the interviews. “I’ve had what the police, anyway, would regard as credible threats.”

This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views.

So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think.

The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people.

You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population.

But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.

Take it from one of her former critics. E.J. Rosetta, a journalist who once denounced Rowling for her supposed transphobia, was commissioned last year to write an article called “20 Transphobic J.K. Rowling Quotes We’re Done With.” After 12 weeks of reporting and reading, Rosetta wrote, “I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message.” On Twitter she declared, “You’re burning the wrong witch.”

For the record, I, too, read all of Rowling’s books, including the crime novels written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, and came up empty-handed. Those who have parsed her work for transgressions have objected to the fact that in one of her Galbraith novels, she included a transgender character and that in another of these novels, a killer occasionally disguises himself by dressing as a woman. Needless to say, it takes a certain kind of person to see this as evidence of bigotry.

This isn’t the first time Rowling and her work have been condemned by ideologues. For years, books in the “Harry Potter” series were among the most banned in America. Many Christians denounced the books’ positive depiction of witchcraft and magic; some called Rowling a heretic. Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church and the author of “Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving Extremism,” says that she appreciated the novels as a child but, raised in a family notorious for its extremism and bigotry, she was taught to believe Rowling was going to hell over her support for gay rights.

Phelps-Roper has taken the time to rethink her biases. She is now the host of “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.” The podcast, based on nine hours of her interviews with Rowling — the first time Rowling has spoken at length about her advocacy — explores why Rowling has been subjected to such wide-ranging vitriol despite a body of work that embraces the virtues of being an outsider, the power of empathy toward one’s enemies and the primacy of loyalty toward one’s friends.

The podcast, which also includes interviews with critics of Rowling, delves into why Rowling has used her platform to challenge certain claims of so-called gender ideology — such as the idea that transgender women should be treated as indistinguishable from biological women in virtually every legal and social context. Why, both her fans and her fiercest critics have asked, would she bother to take such a stand, knowing that attacks would ensue?

“The pushback is often, ‘You are wealthy. You can afford security. You haven’t been silenced.’ All true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women” with similar views who may also wish to speak out, Rowling says in the podcast.

“And I say that because I have seen it used that way,” Rowling continues. She says other women have told her they’ve been warned: “Look at what happened to J.K. Rowling. Watch yourself.”

Recently, for example, Joanna Cherry, a Scottish National Party lawmaker who is a lesbian and a feminist, publicly questioned Scotland’s passage of a “self-ID” law that would allow people to legally establish by mere declaration that they are women after living for only three months as a transgender woman — and without any need for a gender dysphoria diagnosis. She reported that she faced workplace bullying and death threats; she was also removed from her frontbench position in Parliament as spokeswoman for justice and home affairs. “I think some people are scared to speak out in this debate because when you do speak out, you’re often wrongly branded as a transphobe or a bigot,” she said.

Phelps-Roper told me that Rowling’s outspokenness is precisely in the service of this kind of cause. “A lot of people think that Rowling is using her privilege to attack a vulnerable group,” she said. “But she sees herself as standing up for the rights of a vulnerable group.”

Rowling, Phelps-Roper added, views speaking out as a responsibility and an obligation: “She’s looking around and realizing that other people are self-censoring because they cannot afford to speak up. But she felt she had to be honest and stand up against a movement that she saw as using authoritarian tactics.”

As Rowling herself notes on the podcast, she’s written books where “from the very first page, bullying and authoritarian behavior is held to be one of the worst of human ills.” Those who accuse Rowling of punching down against her critics ignore the fact that she is sticking up for those who have silenced themselves to avoid the job loss, public vilification and threats to physical safety that other critics of recent gender orthodoxies have suffered.

Social media is then leveraged to amplify those attacks. It’s a strategy Phelps-Roper recognizes from her days at Westboro. “We leaned into whatever would get us the most attention, and that was often the most outrageous and aggressive versions of what we believed,” she recalled.

It may be a sign of the tide turning that along with Phelps-Roper, several like-minded creative people — though generally those with the protection of wealth or strong backing from their employers — are finally braving the heat. In recent months and after silence or worse from some of the young actors whose careers Rowling’s work helped advance, several actors from the “Harry Potter” films, such as Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, have publicly defended the author.

In the words of Fiennes: “J.K. Rowling has written these great books about empowerment, about young children finding themselves as human beings. It’s about how you become a better, stronger, more morally centered human being,” he said. “The verbal abuse directed at her is disgusting. It’s appalling.”

Despite media coverage that can be embarrassingly credulouswhen it comes to the charges against Rowling, a small number of influential journalists have also begun speaking out in her defense. Here in America, Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic tweeted last year, “Eventually, she will be proven right, and the high cost she’s paid for sticking to her beliefs will be seen as the choice of a principled person.”

In Britain the liberal columnist Hadley Freeman left The Guardian after, she said, the publication refused to allow her to interview Rowling. ​​She has since joined The Sunday Times, where her first column commended Rowling for her feminist positions. Another liberal columnist for The Guardian left for similar reasons; after decamping to The Telegraph, she defended Rowling, despite earlier threats of rape against her and her children for her work.

Millions of Rowling’s readers no doubt remain unaware of her demonization. But that doesn’t mean that — as with other outlandish claims, whether it’s the Big Lie or QAnon — the accusations aren’t insidious and tenacious. The seed has been planted in the culture that young people should feel that there’s something wrong with liking Rowling’s books, that her books are “problematic” and that appreciating her work is “complicated.” In recent weeks, an uproar ensued over a new “Harry Potter” video game. That is a terrible shame. Children would do well to read “Harry Potter” unreservedly and absorb its lessons.

Because what Rowling actually says matters. In 2016, when accepting the PEN/Allen Foundation award for literary service, Rowling referred to her support for feminism — and for the rights of transgender people. As she put it, “My critics are at liberty to claim that I’m trying to convert children to satanism, and I’m free to explain that I’m exploring human nature and morality or to say, ‘You’re an idiot,’ depending on which side of the bed I got out of that day.”

Rowling could have just stayed in bed. She could have taken refuge in her wealth and fandom. In her “Harry Potter” universe, heroes are marked by courage and compassion. Her best characters learn to stand up to bullies and expose false accusations. And that even when it seems the world is set against you, you have to stand firm in your core beliefs in what’s right.

Defending those who have been scorned isn’t easy, especially for young people. It’s scary to stand up to bullies, as any “Harry Potter” reader knows. Let the grown-ups in the room lead the way. If more people stood up for J.K. Rowling, they would not only be doing right by her; they’d also be standing up for human rights, specifically women’s rights, gay rights and, yes, transgender rights. They’d also be standing up for the truth.

Source: Paul: In Defense of J.K. Rowling

Filed under gender Tagged with , ,

Argentina says mafia groups are spurring Russian birth tourism

2023/02/18 Leave a comment

Appears that there may be a similar cottage industry to that of Richmond but possibly with criminal elements rather than businesses. But articles have been conflicting whether the women have resources to pay for these services or are relatively destitute:

Argentine officials have blamed organized “mafias” for promoting birth tourism to the South American country by Russian mothers-to-be amid a boom in numbers traveling there since the invasion of Ukraine looking to get their children citizenship.

Thousands of expectant Russian mothers have arrived in Argentina over the last year, including 33 on a single flight last week, which threw a spotlight on the trend. Some were detained and officials launched a crackdown on the practice.

Florencia Carignano, head of Argentina’s immigration office, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that “mafia organizations were profiting by offering packages to obtain our passport to people who do not actually want to reside in our country.”

Russians can travel to Argentina without a visa, where all newborns are granted citizenship automatically, making it an attractive destination for so-called birth tourism.

“We detected a significant increase in the entry of Russian citizens in recent months. That is why we decided to investigate and we interviewed 350 of them who were in advanced pregnancy,” Carignano said.

“In the interviews we discovered that this organization offers people, in exchange for a large sum of money, a birth tourism package with the Argentine passport as the main reason for the trip.”

Carignano said that the immigration office had passed data related to the case to the country’s judiciary with the aim of defending the integrity of Argentina’s passport issuance.

Source: Argentina says mafia groups are spurring Russian birth tourism

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

The U.S. isn’t rushing to deal with Canada’s Roxham Road migrant problem

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Realpolitik, no incentive for USA and off-loading some of their “problems” makes meaningful and successful negotiations unlikely, although Michael Barutciski argues that it can be done (Is a diplomatic solution possible for Roxham Road?:

On the day that Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette celebrated the mass relocation of Roxham Road migrants to Ontario, her boss, Premier François Legault, told reporters he couldn’t understand why the U.S. wasn’t willing to take border-crossers back.

He met U.S. Ambassador David Cohen on Tuesday, and then said he doesn’t know why the U.S. won’t change a border agreement so people who enter Canada at Roxham Road, an unofficial crossing between Quebec and New York State, can be returned to the U.S.

“I said to him, I don’t understand why it is taking so long to settle with the United States.”

Mr. Legault is an intelligent politician, so he must be deliberately playing dumb.

He knows the relief that government leaders feel when their intractable problem becomes someone else’s. Ms. Fréchette said the Quebec government was “very happy” that 372 of the 380 people who crossed into Canada at Roxham Road since Saturday had been relocated outside Quebec.

Surely Mr. Legault must have a clue as to why the U.S. government isn’t rushing to solve Canada’s Roxham Road issue.

The U.S. position is not an accident. It has for decades resisted doing what Canada wants it to do on this file.

To be clear, Quebec is right to want some of the migrants, many of whom will seek asylum, to be relocated. The RCMP intercepted 39,171 people entering Canada at Roxham Road in 2022, and the province, and especially Montreal, complained their capacity to settle people was strained. The border is Canada’s responsibility, not just Montreal’s, or Quebec’s.

And certainly, it would be easier on all levels of government in Canada if the United States just took all those people back. But it has resisted.

Politicians shouldn’t act as though getting the U.S. to change should be a snap. Justin Trudeau’s government has hinted a deal might be coming, but we might want to see it before we believe it. You’d have to think there would be some serious quid pro quo. It isn’t the Americans’ border problem.

There was a period in the pandemic when the U.S. did accept people back, in theory temporarily, when both countries closed their borders. Not many people tried to cross at Roxham Road. But the U.S. ended that arrangement in November, 2021. People started crossing there again.

There was a long history before that. At one time, asylum-seekers could simply show up at any official border crossing and claim refugee status in Canada. But as the numbers grew in the 1990s, Ottawa tried and fail to make a deal. The U.S. declined. It was only after the 9/11 attacks, in a broad border pact, that the U.S. accepted a Safe Third Country Agreement that allowed Canada to return asylum-seekers who arrived via the U.S. to make their claim there.

But it only applied at official border posts, and for a pretty simple reason: The United States wanted it that way. It didn’t want the trouble of accepting people who might show up anywhere along the long border with Canada.

The agreement was always opposed by refugee advocates, but from the start there was also a concern that it would encourage people to cross the border in illicit places. Jason Kenney has said he tried to convince the U.S. to change it when he was immigration minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, to no avail.

Fast forward to now, when Roxham Road has become a well-travelled route, and the U.S. still isn’t itching to change it. And we shouldn’t be surprised, when the hottest political issue in the U.S. is illegal entries across the Mexican border, that the U.S. is not racing to stop 40,000 people from leaving.

If the U.S. did apply the Safe Third Country Agreement outside official border crossings, it would shut down Roxham Road, but more people would cross at the many other locations along the boundary.

Taking them all back would require more work and more patrols along the Canadian border when the U.S. devotes its resources to the Mexican boundary. The U.S. Border Patrol has 2,073 agents along the northern boundary, compared to 16,070 agents at the southern border – whose patrols logged more than a million “encounters” with border crossers in 2022.

And U.S. President Joe Biden couldn’t expect to be celebrated for making a deal with Canada that prevents tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from leaving the U.S. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat like Mr. Biden, has been giving asylum-seekers bus tickets to get to Roxham Road. No one should be surprised the U.S. isn’t jumping to “solve” this Canadian problem.

Source: The U.S. isn’t rushing to deal with Canada’s Roxham Road migrant problem

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

40% decline in permanent residents becoming Canadian citizens since 2001, data shows

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Of concern, accelerating trend that I started identifying a number of years ago:

StatCan numbers reveal the percentage of permanent residents who become Canadians has plummeted over the past 20 years.

The Institute for Canadian Citizenship says Statistics Canada data points to a 40 per cent decline in citizenship uptake since 2001.

The group’s CEO, Daniel Bernhard, calls the drop alarming and says it should serve as a “wake up call” to improving the experience newcomers have in Canada.

In 2021, nearly 45.7 per cent of permanent residents who’d been in Canada for less than 10 years became citizens.

That’s down from 60 per cent in 2016, and 75.1 per cent in 2001.

The StatCan data did not identify reasons for the drop, but Bernhard suggests Canada’s cost of living and job prospects are likely factors.

He says the institute is investigating root causes.

“There are a myriad of issues,” said Bernhard.

“But ultimately, what’s changing is that people have decided that they’re less interested in being `Team Canada.”’

Bernhard said the decline affects Canada’s long-term economic and social outlook.

“This is a problem for all of us who care about Canada’s future prosperity and dynamism,” he said. “We need to solve this for the future of our country.”

The federal government has said it wants to boost immigration by adding 1.45 million permanent residents over the next three years, starting with 465,000 in 2023 and increasing to 500,000 in 2025.

Source: 40% decline in permanent residents becoming Canadian citizens since 2001, data shows

The National Post take:

As Canada ratchets up immigration to the highest levels in its history, surprising new figures from Statistics Canada are showing that nearly half of all recent immigrants are no longer bothering to seek Canadian citizenship.

The numbers were publicized this week by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. And according to the group’s CEO Daniel Bernhard, they may be a sign that the Canadian dream is no longer working out for newcomers.

“What’s changing is that people have decided that they’re less interested in being ‘Team Canada,’” Bernhard said in a statement, adding that the figures are a “wake up” call to the Canadian immigrant experience is treating new arrivals.

In 2021, of the permanent residents who had come to Canada within the last 10 years, just 45.7 per cent had become citizens. In 2001, that figure was 75.1 per cent.

It’s not the first time that evidence has emerged to show that new immigrants are not as enthralled with Canada as in prior decades.

A March Leger survey — also commissioned by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship — found that more than one fifth of recent immigrants were already making plans to leave. Among under-34 immigrants, in particular, 30 per cent said they were “likely” to leave Canada within the next two years.

As to why, newcomers are citing the same concerns with the country as native-born Canadians: Skyrocketing housing costs and diminishing access to government services such as health care.

In the Leger poll, even among immigrants who wanted to stay, their number one reservation was “high cost of living.”

In a bid to boost GDP, the Trudeau government has already raised Canada’s immigration intake to the highest levels in Canadian history, and is on track to bring in 500,000 newcomers annually by 2025. Absent any dramatic policy changes, this influx will likely worsen many of the issues that are already beginning to scare away new Canadians.

On Tuesday, CIBC CEO Victor Dodig warned that if Canada continued packing in immigrants without a viable plan to absorb them, it could spur an unprecedented “social crisis.”

“New Canadians want to establish a life here, they need a roof over their heads. We need to get that policy right and not wave the flag saying isn’t it great that everyone wants to come to Canada,” Dodig said at an event hosted by Canadian Club Toronto.

One other factor potentially driving down rates of immigrants seeking citizenship is that Canada’s immigrant stream is increasingly coming from countries that do not tolerate dual citizenship, thus prompting many newcomers to remain permanent residents in perpetuity.

The chief examples are India and China. Indian nationals are required to surrender their Indian passport the moment they become Canadian citizens. Chinese prohibitions on dual citizenship were illustrated most glaringly in 2021, when the Beijing government tightened its control on Hong Kong by forcing 300,000 residents with joint Canadian citizenship to either leave or tear up their Canadian passport.

Both countries now represent a significant share of Canada’s current immigrant influx. As per 2021 figures, 18.6 per cent of recent Canadian immigrants reported India as their birthplace, while 8.9 per cent reported being born in China.

For context, just three per cent of recent immigrants were born in the United States.

In 2022, Canada officially welcomed 431,645 immigrants. Notably, the last time in Canadian history that immigration levels were this high — during the settling of the prairies in the years preceding the First World War – it was also paired with surging levels of outmigration as many newcomers swiftly abandoned their new Canadian homesteads.

“A lot of people left; outmigration was as high as in-migration for a very, very long time,” Adele Perry, a researcher of Western Canadian history, told the National Post in 2012.

Source: Canada is scaring away its new immigrants

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Henley & Partners, Leader In Controversial ‘Golden Passports,’ Sets Sights On U.S.’s Ultra Rich

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

Henley & Partners, the U.K.-based consultancy, has become the most prominent facilitator of so-called “golden passport” and “golden visa” schemes for the ultra-rich after decades of securing passports for the wealthy in Russia, India, China and more. Now it’s turning to the U.S. as its next major market, boasting an unprecedented uptick in the number of high net worth Americans seeking second citizenship.

Migration investment schemes, which effectively allow people to purchase citizenship or residency in exchange for an investment in a country, have long been controversial but came under a harsh new light after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Forbesfound that nearly half of 35 sanctioned billionaires had a second (or even third) passport, including through European investment migration schemes. Many of the most prominent citizens by investment schemes have since moved to halt sales to Russian applicants, revoke passports or shut down altogether—including most recently Ireland, which announced abruptly on Tuesday it was shutting down its decades-old scheme. Portugal’s program, which has been one of the most lucrative for Henley & Partners, is currently being reviewed by its government.

Despite the crackdowns in Europe, Henley & Partners says business is better than ever—and not for the reasons many may expect. On Wednesday, at a glitzy private luncheon at the Lotte New York Palace, a five-star hotel in Manhattan, the firm’s leaders, including CEO Juerg Steffen, touted the record number of inquiries and applications received by Henley & Partners in 2022, with the highest number coming from a somewhat surprising market—the U.S.—which Steffen claims is about 20% of the firm’s citizenship investment business in 2022, followed by India.

Overall, Henley & Partners’ business grew 25% last year, and another 35% the year before, Steffen told Forbes in an interview before the event. The company would not share revenues for “competitive reasons” but it takes a cut out of every visa or citizenship application, with higher charges for applications with multiple people (70% of applicants are families). The migration firm also runs a government consultancy business advising countries on how to start and run investment migration programs, which Stefan said makes up about one third of the group’s total business. The firm saysit helped set up “many” of the 30 residence and/or citizenship programs it facilitates, such as St. Kitts & Nevis, which it helped relaunch starting in 2006. Steffen claims the investment migration industry is now worth some $30 billion, including the amount invested, though others have pegged it closer to $3 billion.

According to a “USA Wealth Report” published in conjunction with the event, the number of Americans making inquiries to Henley & Partners about citizenship investment and residency options has increased more than four fold since 2019 (the company did not share exact numbers for either data point). The firm claimed it received more inquiries from wealthy Americans than any other nationality last year. That includes Russians and Chinese, though the former is likely explained by many of these programs halting Russian applicants, and the latter by China’s strict coronavirus-related travel restrictions; Steffen said there has been an uptick in interest from wealthy Chinese since the country’s borders reopened in January.

To accommodate the new levels of interest, Henley & Partners announced the opening of three U.S, offices in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Steffen also said the company is planning to expand its workforce from 300 to 400 people by the end of the year. Previously, the company’s office in Canada handled all inquiries from Americans. One employee of the newly formed New York office said it is already working with 200 clients.

As for why wealthy Americans would be interested in getting another passport, Steffen claims that a number of U.S. billionaires started approaching Henley & Partners after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. “From our perspective it has probably to do with the political environment but also how the government handled Covid at the beginning. They realized, we have a private jet but we can’t just leave and go to another country even if it’s perhaps more secure. Then they realized how important it is to have more than one residence and citizenship,” he said.

But the U.S. is politically and economically stable relative to some of the countries where Americans are reportedly seeking access. According to the report, the most sought after programs among Americans were Portugal’s Golden Residence Permit Program, which requires a minimum real estate investment of nearly $300,000 and can take up to 18 months to process, followed by Malta’s, a program that requires its applicants to live in the country for 36 months and make a minimum investment of about $790,000. Also commonly pursued was Caribbean citizenship through St. Kitts & Nevis, which requires a significantly smaller $125,000 investment and can take less than half a year, according to the firm.

Critics have long pointed to the schemes as a vessel for potential corruption, money laundering and tax avoidance. “We consider that the sale of citizenship through ‘golden passports’ is illegal under EU law and poses serious risks to our security,” Didier Reynders, the European Commission’s commissioner for justice and consumers, saidlast March as the commission escalated its campaign against citizenship by investment schemes by calling an end to the programs.

In an April 2022 interview with Forbes, ” Eka Rostomashavili of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International acknowledged that while there are “legitimate reasons for wanting to have a second passport,” she argued. Many wealthy Russians sanctioned for their connections to the Kremlin have EU passports “because they probably don’t want to live in the mess that they helped create.”

As the biggest player in the investment migration industry, Henley & Partners has landed in the hot seat more than once in recent years after a slew of reports raised questions about some of people it has helped get passports. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published a report in March 2022 detailing how the firm helped a “bevy of high-risk clients” gain citizenship, including some individuals with questionable backgrounds who were later sanctioned or convicted of crimes.

Henley & Partners has repeatedly responded to these allegations asserting it follows all local and international laws and regulations. In his interview with Forbes, Steffen echoed these points, saying that while the industry is largely unregulated, Henley & Partners follows an extensive due diligence process that involves looking at a person’s criminal record from everywhere they’ve lived in the past 10 years and consulting with external investigative companies that write reports ranging from 30 to 70 pages on each potential client. “For us, it’s of course, very important from a reputational perspective,” said Steffen. He said that it took a year to move through all the regulatory hurdles required to start its business in the U.S.

Whether the demand is as high as it claims, moving into the U.S. market seems to offer another important benefit to Henley & Partners, which is a shot at building legitimacy for an industry that has been delivered significant blows over the past year. Steffen says he isn’t worried. While some programs have tightened their application criteria or even closed, he said the firm has been conversing with many new governments open to launching programs. “It’s getting mainstream and most of the countries actually have these programs now,” said Steffen.

Source: Henley & Partners, Leader In Controversial ‘Golden Passports,’ Sets Sights On U.S.’s Ultra Rich

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

Reaction to Conservative support for the notwithstanding clause

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

From the right (Ivison) to the left (Raj):

Most MPs come to Ottawa with good intentions, resolving to follow their conscience to make life better for their communities. Often though, they find that their conscience is not going in the same direction as their party. A decade ago, I remember Indo-Canadian Conservative MP Tim Uppal sending me a set of head scarves for my western Quebec soccer team, to wear in a solidarity protest against the Quebec Soccer Federation’s turban ban. Today, Uppal says he opposes Quebec’s Bill 21, the law that bans some public servants in the province from wearing religious symbols such as turbans to work.

Yet, earlier this week, he and the rest of the Conservative party voted in favour of a Bloc Québécois motion that called on the House of Commons to remind the government that it is solely up to Quebec and the provinces to decide on the use of the notwithstanding clause.

This is the same clause that was invoked by Francois Legault’s Quebec government pre-emptively to shield it from court challenges — which was prescient because the Quebec Superior Court judged last year that Bill 21 violates religious freedom but is beyond the reach of the judiciary. A panel of judges at the Quebec Court of Appeal is now weighing whether the bill disproportionately discriminates against Muslim women who wear the hijab (even the notwithstanding clause does not protect legislation that discriminates on the basis of gender).

I wrote to Uppal and said I was surprised at the party’s position on the use of notwithstanding. “I understand it’s popular in Quebec but we both know it’s blatant discrimination,” I said.

In reply, Uppal said that the motion was about the ability of the provinces to use the notwithstanding clause as guaranteed in the Constitution. “We are not interested in getting into a drawn-out constitutional battle. There are more important issues to focus on,” he said. It would be mildly amusing to watch political parties make age-old mistakes for the first time, if the consequences weren’t so serious. The Conservative party’s discomfort at siding with the Bloc, in pursuit of soft nationalist votes, risks alienating ethnic voters.

It is reminiscent of Justin Trudeau’s indiscretion early in his leadershipwhen he said he favoured keeping existing representation in the Senate because it was to Quebec’s advantage — a statement that did not go down well in other parts of the country where he was trying to build support. It may once have been possible to simultaneously pander to different groups on opposite sides of the same issue, but it is no longer. We have the internet now.

Uppal has been trying to reassure the World Sikh Organization that he and his party remain opposed to Quebec’s secularism law. He has said the Liberals are trying to spin a narrative that the Conservatives explicitly support the pre-emptive use of the clause.

Who knows why anyone might believe that line, except for the fact that it is demonstrably true.

The Bloc’s motion is not abstract — it relates directly to the pre-emptive use of Section 33 of the Constitution by the Legault government in its secularism and language legislation.

Sikh groups have, correctly, asserted that this erodes the Charter and suspends human rights. Uppal claims that the notwithstanding provision is a longstanding part of the Charter, which is true, but he cannot ignore that this vote empowers Legault and endorses his position. I know the arguments in favour of use of notwithstanding — and support them to a point. Stephen Harper’s former deputy chief of staff, Howard Anglin, made an impassioned argument in support of Section 33 recently, arguing that judges violated the “1982 bargain” by egregiously overreaching in their judgments. “Judges make poor gods,” he said. “Call me a stickler for democracy but I prefer the people wielding ultimate power in any society to be accountable, and, in a pinch, removable.”

He’s right. But until recently, the clause was used when politicians wanted to correct what they believed was judicial excess. Now it is being invoked (by Quebec and Ontario) at the beginning of the process to camouflage unjust laws. Federal justice minister David Lametti says that such use “guts Canadian democracy and means the Charter doesn’t exist” — a bold statement that commits his government to act.

Trudeau said in late January that Lametti is looking to refer the use of Section 33 to the Supreme Court, pending the ruling from the Quebec Court of Appeal on the religious symbols case. The prime minister’s intervention provoked a choleric reaction from Legault, who says it is up to the Quebec National Assembly to decide the laws that govern the province.

The premier argues the Canadian Charter is part of the Constitution Act that Quebec didn’t sign — an argument that ignores Quebec’s own charter, adopted unanimously by the province’s legislature in 1975, which is clear that every person has the right to full and equal recognition of his or her human rights, without distinction, exclusion or preference based on race, gender or religion. “Discrimination exists where such a distinction, exclusion or preference has the effect of nullifying or impacting such rights,” it says. Legault has been discriminating against the allophones and anglophones that constitute 20 per cent of Quebec’s population because it is popular with the francophone majority, who have been persuaded by their government that the French language and Quebec culture are threatened.

The federal government has little option but to oppose such blatant injustice, but in doing so the country’s unity will likely be tested. If Lametti asks the Supreme Court to impose restrictions on the use of Section 33, it could prove explosive. The court may refuse to hear the case on the grounds of conflict of interest — Section 33 was designed to limit the power of the courts. If the top court’s anglo majority does overturn the law, it could be the casus belli the separatists have been waiting for and could send Canada hurtling toward another referendum.

In their defence, the Conservatives might argue that western premiers don’t want restrictions placed on a notwithstanding clause that has been used by Alberta and Saskatchewan.

But the real reason Conservatives voted for a Bloc motion — never a smart or admirable thing — is to pander for votes in Quebec.

They may get them, but the cost could be their integrity and the trust of ethnic communities who could lose confidence in Poilievre’s party as a protector of minority rights.

Conservative MPs might want to refresh their memories on the thoughts of the philosophical founder of their movement, Edmund Burke, on the subject of natural law and individual rights. “The liberty of no one man, no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in society. This kind of liberty is indeed but another name for justice; ascertained by wise laws and secured by well-constructed institutions.”

Source: In Quebec, the Tories can choose principles or pandering. Not both

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s Quebec lieutenant made a shocking declaration this week that went unnoticed in English Canada, telling reporters that Conservatives “of course” agree with the provinces’ pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause.

On Tuesday, Quebec MP Pierre Paul-Hus said the party “might not necessarily” contest Quebec’s Bill 21 at the Supreme Court — reversing Poilievre’s previous stance. Then, Paul-Hus added, “Is the use of the notwithstanding clause in a pre-emptive manner, as the provinces have used it — are Conservatives in agreement with that?”

“Bien oui,” he said, meaning, “Of course” — or, literally, “Well, yes.”

That might be news to some of the Conservative MPs who vocally opposed Bill 21, a discriminatory law that bars those wearing religious symbols from holding certain public-sector jobs.

But perhaps they shouldn’t be surprised.

This week, they all sided with the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois and voted to tell Ottawa — the Liberals and any future federal government — to butt out of the notwithstanding clause debate. (Only Manitoba’s Candice Bergen, Nova Scotia’s Rick Perkins and Ontario’s Alex Ruff, who represents Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, didn’t show up for the vote, and only the Liberals and NDP opposed.)

The motion proposed by the Bloc read: “That the House remind the government that it is solely up to Quebec and the provinces to decide on the use of the notwithstanding clause.”

The notwithstanding clause was a compromise that allowed prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to enshrine the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Constitution. It gives legislatures the right to override some Charter rights for a renewable period of five years. Several politicians around the table at the time felt the political cost of using the clause would dampen the temptation to use it.

But that thinking has drastically shifted. In 2019, Quebec’s government introduced Bill 21 to popular support. Knowing the legislation was discriminatory, Premier François Legault pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause to protect it from court scrutiny. The clause was pre-emptively used again last year by Quebec when it passed Bill 96, legislation that limits the rights of anglophones in the province and curbs the use of other minority languages.

Then, last fall, Ontario Premier Doug Ford attempted to pre-emptively invoke the clause, too — this time to stop educational support workers from striking.

Widespread public opposition and the unions’ collective action forced Ford to back down, but not before Ottawa spent days contemplating how it should respond. Should it ask the Supreme Court if the provinces had the right to use the clause pre-emptively? Within Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, staff argued the power of disallowance — a constitutional provision that gives the federal government the right to disallow provincial laws — was outdated (it hasn’t been used since 1943), but they searched for creative ways to send a message that Ottawa wasn’t happy and that it believed the notwithstanding clause needed parameters around it.

At the time, and again this week, Justice Minister David Lametti argued the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause was robbing the courts of having their say.

“It was always meant to be a last resort, in the context of constitutional negotiations,” he said. “It’s a grave matter when we use a law to breach people’s rights in Canada (and) the use of the notwithstanding clause must be an exception.”

The Bloc, unsurprisingly, doesn’t want the federal government telling Quebec what it can and can’t do.

But it is more than noteworthy that the Tories agree — regardless of whether Paul-Hus was making up party policy on the fly or if he had Poilievre’s benediction.

The vote Monday suggests several things.

First, we can expect that as prime minister, Poilievre would sit back and allow any province to pass discriminatory laws using the notwithstanding clause. This is what the Bloc motion called for. This is what Conservative MPs supported.

Second, Poilievre is aggressively courting nationalist voters in Quebec, embracing the same playbook that failed for Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer, and his position on Bill 21 may be shifting again. During the French-language Conservative leadership debate last May, Poilievre said he “would not reverse the federal decision” to fight both Bill 21 and 96 at the Supreme Court. But if the Liberals are no longer in office when these laws reach the country’s top court, can Poilievre be counted on to defend minority rights? Monday’s vote suggests not.

Lastly, the Conservative MPs who vehemently opposed Bill 21, who argued against O’Toole’s non-intervention policy and paved the way for his ouster and Poilievre’s leadership, acted disingenuously. Opposing Bill 21, believing that pre-emptive use of the clause should be limited, or that the federal government should fight the bill at the Supreme Court, meant voting against this motion.

Several MPs I spoke with said they believed they were simply reaffirming what the Constitution states, making a statement of fact.

It clearly was about much more than that.

Either you believe in something, or you don’t.

Source: Would Pierre Poilievre’s Tories let provinces strip us of our rights? ‘Of course,’ one of his MPs says

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →