Ottawa’s contract for $200-million fund not transparent, Black business group says

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Not a good look:

A prominent Black business group is accusing the federal government of running a rushed and opaque procurement process to administer a $200-million endowment program for Black-led charities and community organizations.

The Liberal government first announced the Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund in the 2021 budget, but only put out a request for proposals to run the fund last fall. Groups had until Nov. 25 to apply. The fund is meant to be self-sustaining for at least 10 years and the administrators have access to only $9.5-million of the fund for early operating and granting activities.

One group that applied is the Black Opportunity Fund (BOF), which was started by a coalition of Black executives in 2020 to tackle systemic anti-Black racism in corporate Canada and invest in Black-led organizations and businesses.

BOF is funded through programs with corporate partners, including Toronto-Dominion Bank and Walmart Stores Inc. It does not currently take government funding.

Executive director Craig Wellington said BOF had been one of many groups with whom the government had consulted in designing the philanthropic fund.

He said BOF wrote up a proposal of more than 500 pages to describe in detail how the fund could be used effectively, and had arranged a consortium of partners that included the Toronto Foundation and RockCreek, a global investment firm with $16-billion in assets under management.

He said after the group filed its application in November, it heard nothing until Jan. 27, when it was informed it was not selected for the fund in a short e-mail signed from “Service Canada.”

“We had received no phone calls, no communication, no e-mails, regarding the proposal. Not a question,” Mr. Wellington said.

He said the short timeline – compared with the length of time it usually takes the government to do its due diligence on large procurement processes – suggested to him that Ottawa already had a winner in mind.

“What we are starting to hear is that they’ve already selected the agent,” Mr. Wellington said. “Which would be shocking, because we’re talking about Nov. 25 to a week ago. You’re talking eight weeks total, including the holiday closure. For a $200-million procurement. That is not possible. The government cannot buy computers in six weeks.”

In a letter sent Monday to a group of Liberal ministers that includes Minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen, BOF asked for the government to make a detailed account of how it is reviewing and selecting applications. BOF also asked the federal Auditor-General to review the procurement process.

“It was our expectation that the government would undergo a thorough, rigorous and transparent process to select the steward for the fund, particularly in light of recent controversies with respect to other procurement processes,” said the letter signed from BOF board chair Ray Williams, managing director and vice-chairman of National Bank Financial.

One of the most prominent federal initiatives for Black-owned businesses to date is the $160-million Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, which was slow to roll out funds after it launched in the summer of 2021. A frequent criticism from members of the Black business community has been that the entrepreneurship fund was rushed out the door before it was ready, and not enough due diligence was done in selecting the administrators, which led to poor results.

Brittany-Anne Hendrych, a spokesperson for Mr. Hussen, defended the selection process and said it built on earlier consultations the government had held with Black organizations on the design of the program.

“Let us be clear, all applicants were assessed by officials at Employment and Social Development Canada based on their capacity to deliver on the goals of the endowment fund in a fair, transparent and objective manner,” Ms. Hendrych said in a statement.

She said a fund administrator had indeed been selected and more information would be announced soon.

The Michaëlle Jean Foundation, which was a partner on the BOF application, said it supported the call for more government transparency.

“It is a deep disappointment that the federal government has not had any questions for BOF or its partners with regards to their well-considered and action-oriented proposal for this fund,” executive director Tara Lapointe said in a statement.

Mr. Wellington said he thinks the government is putting optics ahead of its concern for proper spending.

“They’re getting prepared to make an announcement during Black History Month,” he said. “So Black History Month, and making a photo-op or whatever, is more of a priority than a rigorous, transparent process.”

Source: Ottawa’s contract for $200-million fund not transparent, Black business group says

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Douglas Todd: The cure for religious extremism

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Not sure how to achieve this “cure:”

What do the World Cup in Qatar, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, American gay, lesbian and transgendered people, Quebec’s government, Canada’s Indigenous residential schools, and India and China have in common?

They have all been embroiled in recent battles over religious freedom, a subject that can make a lot of eyes glaze over in secularized societies. That is unfortunate, because religious freedom is the remedy to extremism.

The ideal of religious freedom has taken on an especially sour taste in North America because it has been weaponized by some conservative Christians and others to defend their “freedom” to discriminate against gays, lesbians and transgendered people.

While this is a one-sided misuse of the concept, it shouldn’t take away from the value of religious freedom, which many maintain is the foundation of all human rights. That is even while it’s largely misunderstood in the West.

There is no ambiguity, however, in regard to the brutal way tens of millions of Muslims, Christians, Falun Gong members and Baha’i are subjected to harassment, imprisonment, forced labour and worse in Hindu-majority India, Buddhist Myanmar, Shia Iran, and atheist China.

Indeed, six of 10 of the world’s most populous countries — China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria — are home to severe religious extremism, says Brett Scharffs, director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and a renowned specialist on religious freedom.

The four countries that round out the world’s 10 largest — the U.S., Brazil, Bangladesh and Mexico — are also on downward trajectories, says Scharffs. The U.S., for instance, has been battered by more massacres at churches, synagogues and mosques, which are also often targeted for vandalism and arson.

In Canada, a gunman killed six people at a Quebec mosque in 2017. And in 2021, scores of Catholic and other churches in Canada were vandalized or burnt to the ground. These attacks occurred following misleading media reports of the discovery of “mass graves” of children next to the sites of former Indigenous residential schools, which were federally funded and church-run.

It’s not too hard to point to where religious freedom is threatened — including via Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is dangerously backing Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase the preferences of Ukrainian Orthodox people, who want to be independent of Moscow’s oppressive Orthodox leaders.

The concept of religious freedom was also central to a more nuanced issue: Western complaints about anti-homosexual laws in Qatar during the World Cup soccer spectacle.

While it is entirely legitimate to criticize the leaders of countries hosting major global events, Scharffs wonders whether the army of Western critics of Qatar were harder on the Muslim-majority country than on homophobic Putin when he hosted the World Cup in 2018. And when China held last year’s Winter Olympics, Scharffs believes it got off lightly for persecuting Uyghur Muslims and Christians.

Normally, in Canada, religious freedom also tends to play out subtly, since the nation is not yet as polarized as many others, even while some seem to want to make it so.

Many English-speaking Canadians accuse Quebec’s popular governing party of bigotry, Islamophobia and even racism for its 2019 religious neutrality law, Bill 21, which bans public employees in positions of authority from wearing visible religious symbols on the job. But do many fail to understand the French concept of “laicite”?

This week, politicians in Quebec’s Assembly called for the dismissal of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new appointee, Amira Elghawaby, as Canada’s representative on combatting Islamophobia, since she had earlier claimed “the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” She apologized late Wednesday.

Quebec points to how laicite attempts to keep religion out of public affairs, while enshrining the right to believe or not believe. It’s restrictions apply to not only the Muslim hijab, but also the Jewish kippa, Christian cross, and Sikh turban.

Laicite does not tend to get a tolerant hearing in Anglo-American cultures such as Canada, which, as Scharffs says, are arguably the most “permissive” in regard to public religious symbols. Scharffs took note at a conference when French intellectuals unanimously defended laicite in the name of women’s rights. “They had a strong sense that women wearing a hijab was not a sincere expression of autonomy, but was the result of coercion on the part of husbands, fathers and brothers.”

And while Scharffs, a law professor at Brigham Young University, says it is true that women are generally compelled to wear headscarves in many Muslim-majority countries, such as Saudi Arabia, he says in North America the hijab is more an expression of choice. While Scharffs understands Quebec’s attempt to make secularism the over-riding public system, he prefers a more pluralistic position, which allows space for the expression of multiple religious worldviews.

When it comes to the over-heated U.S., Scharffs worries the populist religious right and populist secular left are becoming more extremist, showing little concern for each others’ freedoms. Conservative Christian nationalists, for instance, don’t care about the freedom of minority faiths. And many proponents of identity politics, whether on gender or sexual orientation, are determined to shut down the speech of religious people. That is even while both sides claim they support the principle of non-discrimination.

“The trouble is LGBQT people are scared. And religious people are scared,” said Scharffs. “I see much of today’s polarization driven by fear.”

No wonder the ideal of religious freedom is threatened.

Source: Douglas Todd: The cure for religious extremism

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Shree Paradkar: For Amira Elghawaby, surviving this witchhunt won’t be through civility — she needs to stick to the ugly truth

2023/02/04 Leave a comment

Understand the political pressures to apologize. Still doesn’t justify walking back from her and Farber’s legitimate take on Bill 21 and the Quebec analysis by Leger (virtually all surveys by various companies highlight Quebec’s lower acceptance and tolerance of Canadian Muslims. Other comments, yes:

Take a look at these two quotes.

“Anti-Muslim sentiment appears to be the main motivation for those who support a ban on religious symbols, a new poll has found.” — a Montreal Gazette report in 2019.

“Unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” — an Ottawa Citizen opinion piece a couple of months later.

Can you find the difference between this news report and this commentary? There isn’t much, in substance at least, if you analyze the Leger Marketing poll the quotes reference. But only one of them is at the centre of newly manufactured national outrage.

That second quote appeared in an opinion piece that Amira Elghawaby, then a journalist, co-wrote with Bernie Farber, then CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The first quote is received as information. The second, we’re given to understand, is prejudice.

Elghawaby, whom the Trudeau government appointed only last week as its special representative on combating Islamophobia, is the target of a bizarre witchhunt for the apparent sin of offending an entire province for having repeated the outcome of a poll — three years ago. She apologized for it this week.

She never should have.

Gather around, folks, to hear the story of the most inane politicization of an innocuous political posting, to understand what the cowardice of power looks like and to learn why one must never apologize for speaking truth to that power.

See, it begins in June 2019, when Bill 21, which bans public servants from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs, passed into law.

No, make that 2017, with Bill 62, which decreed nobody was allowed to cover their face while providing a public service. Or maybe 2013, with Bill 60, a supposed “Charter of Values,” calling for a ban on all “ostentatious” religious symbols. Or better still 2010, when the more blatant Bill 94 tried to ban women wearing the niqab and burqa while receiving or delivering public services.

Whatever the bill, whichever the party, whatever the stated purpose — “it affects all religions,” “it respects our secularism” — it is an example of majoritarian excess. That’s true even taking into account that the separation of church and state has been hard-earned in Quebec. And while various religious minorities felt the impact of Bill 21, it has been most devastating for Muslim women.

A survey last August found two-thirds of Muslim women interviewed said they’d either been a victim of or witnessed a hate crime.

In general, I don’t put much stock in the oppression-fighting powers of government appointees. But if the mandate of this representative is to provide expert advice to ministers on combating Islamophobia, you’d think, at the very least, those who appointed her understood that this expert’s views were legitimate.

However, because Quebec is an important battleground for votes, federal politicians are loath to stand against it. Which means majoritarian sentiments, not fairness or principle, dictate political calculus.

It explains why the Liberals appear reluctant to stand by even the mildest of rebukes of Quebec; there was nothing provocative about what Elghawaby and Farber wrote.

Islamophobia literally kills Canadians, and fuels various other forms of violence. But go on, make it about the hurt feelings of the majority instead.

Which is exactly what La Presse began when it reported that the prime minister’s new appointee had once painted Quebec as “anti-Muslim.”

This is why you have Quebec’s nationalist ruling party, Coalition Avenir Québec, scooping a handful of nothing, swirling it in the air, and releasing it with the triumphant flourish of a magician’s revelation. You have opportunistic federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre gleefully swooping in to grab the invisible magic dust and professing great affront by it, and you have the Liberals dithering, contemplating: is the scandal nothing or is it worth something, trapped in the eternal question: what is the value of zero?

At various times, the prime minister has distanced himself from her comments; appeared to stand by her; and apparently facilitated a meeting with the Bloc leader without consulting her.

No doubt other sections of the media are trying to get a bite out of the nothingburger, investigating penetrating handwringers such as “how was she appointed in the first place?”

Photographs published in the past few days could well be a metaphor for her isolation. On the day of the announcement of her appointment, Jan. 26, a photo tweeted by Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen features himself along with Elghawaby and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra among others. On Wednesday, Elghawaby is seen going to meet Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet and facing a swarm of journalists, by herself.

She hasn’t even begun the job. As my colleague Raisa Patel reported, Elghawaby’s start date is Feb. 20. “That also means she currently does not have her own staff, nor is she being paid to take part in such meetings.”

And we wonder why women, especially those marked for identity-based hostility, stay away from public positions?

Those who challenge power are often chided for being belligerent, unreasonable, uncivil. It’s as if all it requires for the powers that be, and those who influence them, to ensure equality is to be asked politely.

Want civility? Elghawaby apologized Thursday. Said she was sorry for having “hurt the people of Quebec.”

“I’m glad that she apologized but she still has to resign,” said Jean-François Roberge, Quebec’s minister responsible for the French language.

So much for conciliation. Lesson learned.

Source: Shree Paradkar: For Amira Elghawaby, surviving this witchhunt won’t be through civility — she needs to stick to the ugly truth

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Immigration increase alone won’t fix the labour market, experts say

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

Still thinking inside the box of increased immigration rather than other policy measures to address labour shortages:
Experts say Canada’s plan to increase immigration may ease some pressures in the labour market, but bigger changes are needed to ensure new permanent residents are matched with the jobs that most need filling.
With the unemployment rate at historic lows, many companies are “starved” for workers, and new immigrants will help fill some of the need, said Ravi Jain, principal at Jain Immigration Law and co-founder of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

Source: Immigration increase alone won’t fix the labour market, experts say

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Yakabuski: Trudeau’s anti-Islamophobia adviser’s job is to preach to the converted

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

Another relevant commentary on the politics of the appointment. As noted earlier, there appointment has drawn criticism from the more secular Muslims, and Iranian Canadians protesting the mandatory hijab in Iran and the Iranian regime:

The noxious effects of identity politics have been on full display in Canada since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Jan. 26 nomination of Amira Elghawaby as his government’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia.

In Quebec, the reaction to Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment has gone far beyond the boilerplate outrage that usually awaits external critics of the province’s efforts to preserve its language, identity and values. This time, the indignation is real and proportional to the offence Mr. Trudeau committed in promoting someone who has perpetuated stereotypes about Quebeckers as hostile toward “others.”

At its core, the controversy over Ms. Elghawaby’s nomination represents a clash of two forms of identity politics practised in Canada that are equally corrosive. One seeks to validate claims of Canada as a country founded on oppression and racism, with both continuing to permeate our institutions and society to the point of inflicting relentless pain on Indigenous, racial, religious and sexual minorities. Practitioners of this kind of identity politics question whether Canada Day is even worthy of celebration, as Ms. Elghawaby herself has done.

Mr. Trudeau rarely misses an opportunity to give succour to those who hold such views. His very appointment of Ms. Elghawaby is an affirmation of this clenched-fist approach to fighting discrimination, which leaves little room for compromise or dialogue. It takes its cues from the radical American left that infiltrates university campuses and silences free speech. And it is embraced by progressive politicians to mobilize their bases.

Ms. Elghawaby’s brand of identity politics has now entered into direct collision with Quebec nationalism, arguably Canada’s oldest form of identity politics and one based on Quebeckers’ perception of themselves as an endangered (and historically oppressed) cultural minority in North America. They take offence, often far too easily, whenever their survivalist reflexes are criticized by others as inward-looking or worse.

It was this kind of identity politics we witnessed on Tuesday when the National Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution calling for the repeal of Ms. Elghawaby’s nomination. MNAs from the far-left Québec Solidaire, which practises American-style identity politics with a Québécois twist, abstained on the vote.

Exhibit A in the case against Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment is a 2019 Ottawa Citizen op-ed on Quebec’s religious symbols ban, co-authored with her Canadian Anti-Hate Network colleague Bernie Farber, in which the duo wrote: “Unfortunately, the majority of Quebeckers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” They went on to refer to a Leger Marketing poll that found that the vast majority of Quebeckers with negative views of Islam supported Bill 21, which prohibits public employees in a position of authority, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols on the job.

It is dangerous to rely on a single poll on a subject as emotionally charged and personal as religion to make a sweeping statement about the motivations of Quebeckers for supporting Bill 21. Besides, one can hold negative views of Islam without being anti-Muslim or Islamophobic. Just as one can criticize Papal doctrine on homosexuality, women and contraception without being anti-Catholic.

The op-ed in question was hardly an isolated incident. In her role as a contributing columnist for the Toronto Star and on social media, Ms. Elghawaby has regularly made uncharitable comments about Quebeckers. In a 2013 column, she saidphilosopher John Ralston Saul “might as well be writing about today’s Quebec” when he referred, in a 2008 book, to the “fear of loss of purity – pure blood, pure race, pure national traits and values and ties” in the Western world.

The cherry on the sundae, if you like, was the tweet (now deleted) that Ms. Elghawaby posted in response to a 2021 Globe and Mail op-ed by University of Toronto philosophy professor Joseph Heath, who had argued that “the largest group of people in this country who were victimized by British colonialism, subjugated and incorporated into Confederation by force, are French Canadians.” Ms. Elghawaby’s tweet did not mince words. “I’m going to puke.”

Ms. Elghawaby is, as the saying goes, entitled to her opinions. But one wonders how she can promote understanding of and tolerance toward Muslims among Canadians if she starts out from the defensive crouch she has taken in her writings. Tolerance is a two-way street.

Then again, Ms. Elghawaby’s appointment has little to do with any attempt by Mr. Trudeau to foster meaningful dialogue. Her nomination is meant to delight outspoken interest groups whose support is critical to Liberal political fortunes.

On Wednesday, Ms. Elghawaby, who will be paid between $162,700 and $191,300 a year in her new post, apologized to Quebeckers for “the hurt [she] caused with her words.” And Mr. Trudeau said he understood Quebeckers’ “distrust” toward organized religion, given the Roman Catholic’s Church’s dominance before the Quiet Revolution. But it was mostly all damage control.

By all accounts, Ms. Elghawaby’s job mainly involves preaching to the converted. She has already shown herself to be very good at that.

Source: Trudeau’s anti-Islamophobia adviser’s job is to preach to the converted

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Les longs délais de traitement des visas nuisent aux universitaires

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

More concern in Quebec regarding visa delays, particularly with respect to conferences and academics:

Les longs délais de traitement pour obtenir un visa de visiteur au Canada causent de plus en plus de maux de tête à des organisateurs de conférences à Montréal comme à Toronto, qui comptent sur la venue d’experts et de participants de l’étranger. Cette difficulté d’obtenir un visa dans les temps complique la tenue de plusieurs de ces grandes rencontres, allant même jusqu’à les compromettre.

Originaire du Maroc, AbdelazizBlilid collabore avec Stéphane Couture, un professeur du Département de communication de l’Université de Montréal, pour une conférence qui doit se tenir au mois de juin à Montréal. Malgré son souhait d’enfin rencontrer son collègue canadien, qu’il n’a jamais vu en personne, M. Blilid est résigné. Avec un délai officiel de 216 jours sur le site Web d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC) pour obtenir un visa de visiteur, le professeur marocain n’a même pas encore pris la peine de déposer une demande.

« Si la situation reste comme telle, je ne demanderai pas de visa, et je manquerai ce deuxième colloque aussi », laisse-t-il tomber, en anticipant qu’il devra y assister à distance. Il commence à être habitué : la dernière fois, un long délai de quatre mois l’avait aussi dissuadé à déposer une demande de visa pour assister à un autre colloque.

L’été dernier, à la suite d’un article rapportant de longs délais de traitement pour les visas de visiteurs, le ministre de l’Immigration Sean Fraser avait réitéré son engagement à diminuer le temps d’attente à la fin de l’année 2022 pour le ramener aux normes de service. Or, comme Le Devoir le révélait mercredi, non seulement les délais n’ont pas baissé six mois après la promesse du ministre, mais ils ont plutôt explosé.

Stéphane Couture a reçu récemment une subvention du fédéral pourorganiser cette conférence, à laquelle40 intervenants et 200 participants sont attendus. Il avait en tête d’inviter des experts du Sénégal, du Maroc et du Cameroun avec qui il collabore. Mais devant les délais qui s’allongent, en particulier pour le Sénégal, où ils sont de 462 jours, il songe à tout reporter. « Une [solution] serait de tenir la conférence dans un autre pays », a dit le professeur.

Pour lui, ces longs délais de traitement nuisent non seulement à ses activités de recherche, mais également à toute son université. « Il y a une attractivité qui n’est pas là. Ce n’est pas très sérieux », soutient-il. « La mission de l’Université de Montréal, c’est d’être l’université francophone la plus influente du monde. Mais si ça prend un an et demi pour avoir la permission de venir visiter Montréal […] alors que mon collègue marocain dit que ça lui prend une semaine pour pouvoir aller en France… »

Les organisateurs de grands événements internationaux y penseront à deux fois avant de choisir Montréal comme ville hôte, craint M. Couture.

Plusieurs embûches

Longs délais de traitement, difficulté d’avoir de l’information concernant l’état d’une demande, acceptation ou refus de dernière minute : pour avoir été responsable de la logistique des participants pour différents congrès internationaux, Laura Sawyer, directrice générale de l’Association internationale de la communication (en anglais, ICA), sait de quoi elle parle.

Mme Sawyer a elle-même dû intervenir auprès des ambassades et des consulats pour aider des participants à obtenir le visa leur permettant d’assister aux divers congrès annuels de son association.

Cette année, le 73e Congrès de l’ICA, qui aura lieu à la fin mai à Toronto, accueillera plus de 4000 participants, dont plus de 3300 viendront de l’extérieur du Canada. Et selon leur nationalité, un grand nombre d’entre eux auront besoin du précieux sésame.

« Nous partageons la frustration des universitaires dans le monde face aux difficultés liées à ces voyages internationaux », a-t-elle affirmé au Devoir. Des difficultés qui se sont exacerbées depuis la pandémie, affirme-t-elle,et qui ont aussi un impact sur la logistique du séjour, dont la réservation des hôtels.

Sans pouvoir juger quatre mois à l’avance de l’ampleur du problème, Laura Sawyer, dont l’association compte plus de 5000 membres répartis dans 80 pays, s’attend encore une fois à devoir personnellement intervenir auprès des autorités migratoires canadiennes.

Les limites de la distance

Pour Mme Sawyer, même si les participants qui n’auront pas obtenu de visa pourront suivre le congrès à distance, il y a une limite à ne jamais pouvoir se rencontrer. « La valeur d’une conférence ne réside pas seulement dans les présentations et les panels, mais aussi dans les conversations de couloir, les événements sociaux, le réseautage », dit-elle. « C’est extrêmement frustrant quand un universitaire renommé, et qui est crucial pour un panel, se retrouve dans l’impossibilité d’entrer dans le pays hôte de la conférence. »

Assister aux conférences en ligne peut être une solution, mais c’est toutefois loin d’être idéal, croit aussi Stéphane Couture.

« Mettez-vous à la place de ces personnes-là. Si la conférence dure quatre jours en décalage horaire via Zoom, ils vont venir à deux ou trois réunions », laisse tomber le professeur. Il aurait aimé que ses collègues venus d’ailleurs restent quelques journées de plus que le colloque pour visiter la ville et tisser des liens. Toute la richesse des rencontres informelles est réduite à néant, déplore-t-il.

Une situation ironique, poursuit-il, quand on considère que la subvention fédérale qu’il a reçue se nomme Connexion, et que le but était « de connecter les gens ». « La dynamique qui permet des connexions va être grandement perdue, croit M. Couture. Les personnes africaines vont structurellement être désavantagées. »

De son côté, l’Université de Montréal indique que les universités canadiennes sont intervenues dans les derniers mois à ce sujet, au même titre que pour les permis d’études des étudiants étrangers.

Source: Les longs délais de traitement des visas nuisent aux universitaires

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Australia’s central bank says it will remove the British monarchy from its bank notes

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

Of note. The easiest change without any constitutional issues, removing the Monarch from bank notes, coins and stamps:

Australia is removing the British monarchy from its bank notes.

The nation’s central bank said Thursday its new $5 bill would feature an Indigenous design rather than an image of King Charles III. But the king is still expected to appear on coins.

The $5 bill was Australia’s only remaining bank note to still feature an image of the monarch.

The bank said the decision followed consultation with the government, which supported the change. Opponents say the move is politically motivated.

The British monarch remains Australia’s head of state, although these days that role is largely symbolic. Like many former British colonies, Australia is debating to what extent it should retain its constitutional ties to Britain.

Australia’s Reserve Bank said the new $5 bill would feature a design to replace a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, who died last year. The bank said the move would honor “the culture and history of the First Australians.”

“The other side of the $5 banknote will continue to feature the Australian parliament,” the bank said in a statement.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the change was an opportunity to strike a good balance.

“The monarch will still be on the coins, but the $5 note will say more about our history and our heritage and our country, and I see that as a good thing,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton likened the move to changing the date of the national day, Australia Day.

“I know the silent majority don’t agree with a lot of the woke nonsense that goes on but we’ve got to hear more from those people online,” he told 2GB Radio.

Dutton said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was central to the decision for the king not to appear on the note, urging him to “own up to it.”

The bank plans to consult with Indigenous groups in designing the $5 note, a process it expects will take several years before the new note goes public.

The current $5 will continue to be issued until the new design is introduced and will remain legal tender even after the new bill goes into circulation.

The face of King Charles III is expected to be seen on Australian coins later this year.

One Australian dollar is worth about 71 cents in U.S. currency.

Source: Australia’s central bank says it will remove the British monarchy from its bank notes

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Liberals resist Tory, Bloc push for Quebec language law to rule federally regulated businesses

2023/02/03 Leave a comment

Just as Quebec zealously guards against and protests federal incursions into areas of provincial responsibility, so should the federal government with respect to federal jurisdiction. One of the recent rare times it is doing so:
Repeated attempts in committee Tuesday by Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois to incorporate elements of Quebec’s new Charter of the French Language in the modernization of the federal Official Languages Act were met with fierce resistance from federal Liberals.The study of C-13 in the parliamentary committee is still in its early stages, and the Bloc and the Conservatives have made it clear that they are siding with the Quebec government. They want businesses in Quebec, including federally regulated businesses, to comply with the provincial charter, which restricts the right of Quebec anglophones to work and be served in English.

More than once during Tuesday’s meeting, the Bloc and Tories introduced amendments that would lead to Quebec’s new language charter — formerly known as “Bill 96” — to prevail over federal jurisdiction, but they were defeated by the Liberals with the help of the lone NDP MP on the committee.

Source: Liberals resist Tory, Bloc push for Quebec language law to rule federally regulated businesses

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Glavin: Amira Elghawaby seemed the perfect appointee to combat ‘Islamophobia’ — except for all the politics 

2023/02/02 Leave a comment

Of note, Glavin’s assessment of the political targeting considerations:

It’s profoundly unfair to Amira Elghawaby that she was engulfed in a whirlwind of opprobrium and hurt feelings and disgust pretty well from the moment the Trudeau government announced last week that she’d been chosen to serve as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia.

No matter what you might think about Elghawaby or about her harshest detractors — among whom you can count members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s own cabinet — the appointment was doomed to turn out badly, no matter who’d been picked for the post. The whole point of Elghawaby’s job — who she’s supposed to represent, exactly, and what she’s expected to be combatting — has been obscured in a shambles of pious boasts, half-truths and cynical disinformation.

According to Trudeau’s announcement last week, Elghawaby is intended to be Canada’s representative in the matter of this thing that has come to be called Islamophobia. But after certain of his Quebec lieutenants and the Quebec government erupted in umbrage owing to indelicate insinuations she’d appeared to have made about Quebeckers, Elghawaby went from being a representative of the Government of Canada to what Trudeau called “a representative to the Government of Canada.” On Monday, Trudeau put it this way: “She is there to speak for the community with the community and build bridges.”

This is not quite throwing Elghawaby under the bus. Neither is it a case of Trudeau having unfairly set up a Muslim woman in the first place to challenge Quebec’s entrenchment of laïcité secularism, which clearly disfavours devout Muslim women in the public service.

At the same time, it’s not hard to make the argument that Trudeau hasn’t shown much mettle in forcefully challenging Quebec on this front himself. Today, Elghawaby told Quebeckers she was sorry that her words “have hurt the people of Quebec … I have heard you and I know what you’re feeling.”

The trouble isn’t just Elghawaby’s views about Quebec’s Bill 21, which the Canadian Civil Liberties Association reasonably describes as a “horrendous law that violates human rights and harms people who are already marginalized” because it prevents teachers, police officers and other public servants from wearing hijabs and turbans and yarmulkes and crosses.

Part of the problem is this: If a job description in a federal posting called for the composite stereotype of a faintly obnoxious and earnest upper-class social justice enthusiast from one of the leafier Liberal strongholds of the Greater Toronto Area, Elghawaby would be the ideal candidate — except she’s an Ottawa resident.

As an activist and frequent opinion-pages contributor, Elghawaby has adopted all the respectable standpoints with just the right degree of transgressive élan, rarely too strident or too squishy. She’s called for removing the Queen as Canada’s head of state and dismissed Canada Day as a festival of “Judeo-Christian storytelling.” She’s been gushing in her praise for Trudeau and backs the Trudeau government’s extremely contentious moves to regulate commentary on the internet. She has argued in favour of Muslim prayer rooms in schools, and once blasted the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper as having done more harm to the image of Canadian Muslims than al-Qaida’s atrocities in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

That last claim was clearly over the top, but fair enough. In certain high-fashion “progressive” circles, that’s the sort of thing one is expected to say.

More worrisome is Elghawaby’s apparent contentment with the conflation of anti-Muslim bigotry with genuine and justifiable alarm among liberal Muslims and national security agencies arising from the presence of reactionary, grossly antisemitic and foreign-influenced Islamist elements within Canada’s Muslim leadership itself. For years, the Trudeau government has used the spectre of “Islamophobia” to dismiss these concerns.

It’s a pattern that began in the traumatic days of January 2017, after six Muslims were massacred at a mosque in the Quebec City suburb of Sainte-Foy. Back then, the Trudeau government sacrificed all-party consensus around a definition of the term Islamophobia, leaving it sufficiently open-ended to include a mere disdain for the Islamic religion itself or even high-pitched opposition to the theocratic-fascist ideologies of Islamism — which is not the religion, Islam.

According to the definition set out in the contentious federal anti-racism strategy, Islamophobia is defined this way: “Includes racism, stereotypes, prejudice, fear or acts of hostility directed towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general. In addition to individual acts of intolerance and racial profiling, Islamophobia can lead to viewing and treating Muslims as a greater security threat on an institutional, systemic and societal level.”

So whatever Islamophobia is, it includes these things.

Two years ago, at the national Summit on Islamophobia where the establishment of the post Elghawaby has taken up was first proposed, the main matter at hand was the Canada Revenue Agency’s audits of certain Muslim-centred charities. At that summit, Trudeau said the CRA was targeting Muslims, and it should stop. “Institutions should support people, not target them,” Trudeau said.

This puts the prime minister squarely at odds with Canada’s national security agencies and the Research and Analysis Division of the CRA’s Charities Directorate. Based on the Finance Ministry’s 2015 Assessment of Inherent Risks of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in Canada, the “most likely” destinations for Canadian funds supporting terrorism were Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories and several other mostly Muslim-majority countries. Terrorist groups with “a Canadian nexus” in the assessment included several Islamist fronts associated with al-Qaida, the Islamic State (ISIL), Hamas, Hezbollah and so on — terrorist groups that rely on an Islamic cover story for their savagery.

Trudeau ordered the CRA Office of the Taxpayer’s Ombudsperson to inquire into the claim that the CRA’s audits of certain Muslim charities constituted “systemic Islamophobia,” but the review has been stymied by the Ombudsperson’s inability to ferret out specific national-security information from the relevant agencies.

The Muslim Association of Canada and the National Council of Canadian Muslims — Elghawaby’s employer during the Islamophobia summit — are now demanding that the CRA audits be called off altogether. They also want the Ombudsman’s review to scrapped because it’s apparently useless. They certainly have a point there.

The whole thing is a mess, and it’s just as jumbled and fractious as Elghawaby’s appointment, which is as Trudeau described it — to “build bridges.” But it’s to build the Liberal Party’s bridges to Muslim voters.

In a 2017 opinion piece for the Ottawa Citizen, Elghawaby quite reasonably described the Quebec government as a bully that was “out to gain votes off the backs of vulnerable minorities.” That’s at least arguably exactly what the Trudeau government is doing here, too.

As Trudeau himself said of Elhawaby: “Her job now is to make sure she’s helping the government.”

Source: Glavin: Amira Elghawaby seemed the perfect appointee to combat ‘Islamophobia’ — except for all the politics 

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Repatriation order for men in Syria raises questions about Canada’s consular obligations

2023/02/02 Leave a comment

I’m on the more cautious side on repatriation and the likelihood of rehabilitation, particularly with respect to adults:

Former diplomats say Canada should have moved to repatriate four men from northeastern Syria without a court order, avoiding another decision from the federal bench that casts more doubt on the country’s obligations to its citizens held for wrongdoing in foreign countries.

A day after the government came to an agreement to repatriate 19 women and children, the Federal Court ruled on Jan. 20 that four men held in detention camps for suspected ISIS members in northeastern Syria must be repatriated, too, noting that their living conditions are “even more dire than those of the women and children who Canada has just agreed to repatriate.”

The government has yet to indicate whether it will appeal the case. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) said on Jan. 23 that the government is looking at the situation “carefully” and is “making sure we’re defending Canadians’ safety and security.”

Former Canadian diplomat Daniel Livermore, who was director general of security and intelligence in Canada’s foreign service, said the Federal Court ruling will force Global Affairs to change its consular policy unless it is appealed.

“The tradition in consular service, the way it has been delivered … it doesn’t matter who you are and what you’ve done, you get consular service irrespective of background,” said Livermore, who authored Detained: Islamic Fundamentalist Extremism and the War on Terror in Canada. “Now, that didn’t happen with these people, and it didn’t happen because of their background.”

Livermore noted that there is little sympathy to provide any kind of assistance for those who are linked with allegedly going abroad to join a terrorist organization.

“I think the court case is really going to force the hands of Global Affairs to come up with something a lot better, and hopefully it is something that is anchored in a more sensible policy than they’ve pursued so far,” he said.

He added that in an “ideal world,” the case shouldn’t have even come to court and the repatriation should have taken place long ago.

In its policy framework to “evaluate the provision of extraordinary assistance,” the government notes that it has “no positive obligation under domestic or international law to provide consular assistance, including repatriation.”

The framework was unearthed as part of the Federal Court case.

The policy notes that Global Affairs “may” provide consular assistance to Canadians abroad with their request and consent, and pursuant to the government’s “royal prerogative on international relations.” The Federal Court ruled that the royal prerogative isn’t “exempt from constitutional scrutiny.”

Livermore said Canadian courts, in successive cases, have undermined the government’s claim of not having to provide consular assistance, including the most recent January decision. He said the notion was also disputed in 2010 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Omar Khadr’s case. The top court ruled it could order the government to ask the United States to repatriate Khadr from detention in Guantanamo Bay, but chose not to. Livermore also cited the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, who the Federal Court ordered be repatriated from Sudan in 2009.

“[The three cases show] a nice little pattern, which undermines the royal prerogative argument and limits it very substantially,” he said.

He said the consular policy is a “residue” of Canada’s post-9/11 policies.

“A lot of our policies were changed without thinking them through,” he said. “A lot of the security agencies at the centre, at the [Privy Council Office], began to exercise powers that they don’t legitimately have a right to claim. Now we’re starting to untangle all this stuff … so presumably Global Affairs will have to work on that a bit and it will be interesting to see how it will come up with it.”

Livermore said one solution for future consular cases is to remove the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from the co-management of the situation, suggesting that could be done by invoking the individual’s rights under the Privacy Act.

Under the government’s framework, CSIS and the RCMP will determine the “potential threat” an individual poses to public safety and national security, which includes “the individual’s involvement in, or association with, terrorist activity, and whether the risk of their return to Canada can be sufficiently mitigated in transit and upon arrival.”

Unlike other countries, Canada has made little progress to repatriate its citizens who have been held in Kurdish-controlled camps in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

The government has cited safety concerns for its inability to travel to the camps to assess the consular cases. Under its framework, it notes that one of the guiding principles is that government officials “must not be put in harm’s way.” Other countries’ diplomats, as well as academics, journalists, and civil society advocates, have gone to the AANES camps.

Patricia Fortier, who served as Global Affairs Canada’s assistant deputy minister responsible for security, consular, and emergency management prior to her retirement in 2016, said the duty-of-care issue is a “very live issue.”

“There is no question that it is more top of mind now than it was in the past,” she said. “No one wants to order an officer into a place where they might not come back or they might be injured.”

She said the recent Federal Court decision continues a “long string” of cases involving the post-9/11 context and return to Canada.

“In each of those, everyone predicted that it would change things and it didn’t,” she said.

She said that the repatriation of the women and children had to come, but the question of the men is a more difficult one for potential public safety reasons.

“It’s going to be a really difficult security question,” she said, noting the situation is unlike many other consular cases as the Kurds who have control over the camps want to offload all the detainees.

“It is an odd situation,” she said, noting that it is unlikely that a similar case will have to be dealt with in the future.

Fortier said the situation will likely be resolved by Global Affairs and the security agencies, with the possible input of the defence department, before winding up on Trudeau’s desk.

She also noted the concern of the Yazidi population in Canada. In 2016, the House of Commons passed a motion that recognized that ISIS was committing genocide against Yazidi people. CBC News reported that survivors of the genocide who have resettled in Canada feel “heartbroken and betrayed.”

She said it is not always possible for the government to have a positive obligation to provide consular assistance, noting that could require Canada to repatriate a Canadian abroad who simply runs out of money.

Former diplomat Gar Pardy, who was the director general of the consular affairs bureau in the foreign service, said he doubted that the government would be interested in using the Federal Court’s decision as a foundation to change its consular policy.

He said that is why he thinks the government will appeal the decision.

Regardless of how the court process ends, Pardy said the government should be repatriating its citizens in northeastern Syria.

“The Canadian government should join what other governments have done,” he said, noting that many of Canada’s allies have repatriated their citizens who were in Syria. “Why the Canadian government has not followed this path—it just doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

The NDP and Green Party have called on the government to move forward on repatriation.

Source: Repatriation order for men in Syria raises questions about Canada’s consular obligations

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , , , ,

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