Paradkar: Professor’s firing over Prophet Muhammad art offensive — but not because of ‘wokeism’ or ‘cancel culture’

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Good column:

The news that a private liberal arts university in the United States fired a professor for showing a painting of the Prophet Muhammad, calling it Islamophobic, should worry us all.

Not because “wokeism” has gone too far or because “cancel culture” has run amok, but because it overrides diversity among Muslims as well as threatens academic freedom and, therefore, democratic ideals. And because the chill is also happening in Canada.

There was nothing woke about Hamline University in Minnesota terminating the contract of Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor — meaning not tenured and working for low or no pay — who in October showed two medieval Islamic artworks in her global art history class. In one, the Prophet’s face is veiled. The other openly depicts Muhammad receiving the revelation of the Quran from the angel Gabriel. To be woke is to be awakened to societal injustices, not to further entrench them.

Nor was cancel culture at play at the university but rather the politics of appeasement, in this case by an institution that, like many, cloaks its reputational risk-management strategy in the language of inclusiveness.

“We have learned, over many years, that knowledge can be shared in a multitude of responsible, thoughtful and respectful ways,” wrote Fayneese Miller, the university’s president, and David Everett, associate vice-president for inclusive excellence, in a letter to the campus on Dec. 9. 

“Respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.”

A month prior, Everett is reported to have called the lesson “disrespectful and Islamophobic.”

If Islamophobia is hate and discrimination springing from prejudice against Islam or Muslims, how does showing an item that is a treasured part of Islamic history perpetuate that hate?

Many but not all Muslims believe visual representations of the prophet are forbidden, even though the Quran does not explicitly forbid it.

“If Islamophobia is characterized by anything that violates Islamic theology, then we have a problem, because that doesn’t respect academic freedom,” says Anver Emon, a professor at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair on Islamic Law and History.

“What is now being conveyed as Islamophobia is deference to certain forms of orthodoxy over others.”

By all accounts, the Hamline lecturer had informed the class beforehand what she was going to show and why, and invited them to bring any concerns to her. The class itself went smoothly.

Still, a student who was also president of the Muslim Student Association complained after the class.

“I’m like, ‘This can’t be real’,” she is quoted saying in the student newspaper. “As a Muslim and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.”

I don’t know if the student didn’t hear the teacher prior to class, or saw it as an opportunity to make a point. But it’s clear that, to her, the lesson tied in with the larger issue of not belonging.

I can see that the university had to do something, or be seen to be doing something, and calculated that losing a staff member on contract was far easier than the hard work of changing its culture.

Wrong move. Students complain, as is their right. But universities that are increasingly treating students as customers need to remember they are not always right. Students’ feelings can and should be taken seriously and issues resolved through dialogue and building trust. Not dealt with through human resources. Not used willy-nilly to dictate the curriculum.

A similar class created a furor at the University of Alberta last year. The professor involved is on leave.

Jairan Gahan, an assistant professor, ran afoul of the Muslim Students Association last February, ironically during a class about Islamophobia, after she shared images of a few medieval miniatures commissioned by a Muslim ruler that depicted the Prophet.

Gahan told the Star she was helping students understand why Muslims are so outraged by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of 2012 but may not react as strongly to other Islamophobic instances. “The point was to show this backlash (to Charlie Hebdo) is not just a theological debate. It’s more than that. It’s about moral injury.”

Given that the cartoon depicted the Prophet, she wanted to show historical diversity. To explain “how we have come to believe that there have been no images of the Prophet. Where is this coming from? What was the historical movement behind it? Is it absolute?”

Gahan says she never got to speak to the student or students who complained despite attempts to do so, found her online ratings as a professor affected and ultimately had a fruitless discussion with a Muslim organization that got involved. 

By contrast Emon, like many scholars, has shown images of Muhammad in class without offering prior warnings. He has a PowerPoint presentation that only looks at Islamic art and depictions of the Prophet. He has discussed and displayed the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons from 2005 depicting Muhammad.

The art depicts the Prophet as veneration, as honour and also for courtly purposes, he says. The cartoons, on the other hand, do so for denigration and to exemplify “the unbelonging of Islam and Muslims in Europe.”

“That’s the fundamental difference. And if we don’t account for that, then we ignore how embedded in every single depiction of the Prophet is a politics.”

To Emon, the situation at Hamline is not all that different from the hiring fiasco at U of T law school in 2020, when a major donor expressed objections to its plans to hire the academic Valentina Azarova, who had previously criticized Israel.

Demanding professors not discuss history or politics or religion because it is uncomfortable to some is an unreasonable restriction. 

This should not be confused with seeking an overhaul of language, curricula and practices that continue to harm the historically marginalized.

The former quashes intellectual inquiry. The latter seeks to refine critical thinking and ultimately uphold democratic principles of freedom, equality and justice. 

“We, the academy, are being accused of violating something sacred, not respecting something sacred, but we are not the keepers of theology, nor are we the protectors of theology,” says Emon. 

“We are here as academics to question everything. And if society can’t sustain that, then there goes democracy.”

Source: Professor’s firing over Prophet Muhammad art offensive — but not because of ‘wokeism’ or ‘cancel culture’

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Saudi Arabia amends criteria to grant citizenship – World

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Of note:
The Saudi Arabian Nationality System has undergone a recent changeA change to Article 8 of the Saudi Arabian Nationality System was made, which gives the Prime Minister (PM) the power to confer citizenship. It has been authorised by higher authorities in the Kingdom.

The term “by decision of the Minister of Interior” in Article 8 was changed to “by an order of the Prime Minister based on Minister of Interior proposal” post revision.

According to Article 8 of the Saudi Arabian Nationality System “A person who is born in the Kingdom to a foreign father and a Saudi mother may be granted Saudi citizenship if certain requirements are met.”

The requirements are that he must be fluent in Arabic, have the status of permanent residency in the Kingdom when he reaches legal age, be of good behaviour and sound character, and should have never been convicted of a crime or sentenced to more than six months in prison for an immoral act.

Source: Saudi Arabia amends criteria to grant citizenship – World

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Elrick: The problem with immigration targets: They’re ‘guesstimates’ easily misunderstood by the public

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Elrick’s critique of immigration targets being ‘guesstimates’ is valid, given the lack of serious analysis of labour and other needs and the lack of consideration of the externalities in terms of housing, healthcare and other public services.

However, in Canada at least, the negative political impact has been limited with only recently some question but not on xenophobic grounds.

But having a better understanding of the impacts of high immigration levels on housing, healthcare, infrastructure is essential to reduce the negative impacts of current and future levels:

The illusion of science that surrounds these numbers and their emotive force make them powerful political tools that need to be better understood by the public to avoid provoking anti-immigration sentiment.

Immigration targets are immigration bureaucrats’ best guess, based on institutional experience and analyses, of how many people can join a society and economy without threatening social cohesion.

In other words, they are estimates of what Canadian immigration bureaucrats have historically referred to the country’s “absorptive capacity.”

Writing in 1948, a high-ranking civil servant called the concept “difficult if not impossible to measure,” while noting that it includes factors such as the population to land ratio (accounting for expected standards of living), demographic trends, employment opportunities and immigrants’ economic, social and human capital.

Based on these considerations, the federal government has aimed since the 1950s — and, as shown below, mostly failed — to bring in the equivalent of one per cent of Canada’s population annually through immigration.

Canada’s immigration levels as a share of population. Author’s calculations

Immigration intake

Ottawa’s announcement late last year of plans to raise its immigration target to 500,000 a year by 2025 is therefore unremarkable from a policy perspective.

Statistics Canada’s low-growth scenario for Canada’s population in 2025 is 39,861,100, which would make the planned immigrant intake equivalent to 1.25 per cent of the population.

The problem with immigration targets entering public debate is that they eliminate nuance while raising anxieties. Like governments, the general public is concerned about “absorptive capacity,” but it seldom has access to the kinds of detailed academic research on the economic and social integration of immigrants that civil servants do.

Integration successes and challenges can vary by someone’s human capital (for example, education and linguistic ability); how they enter the country (for example, as a skilled worker or a spouse); their age and macroeconomic conditions upon arrival; broad institutional contexts (including the structure of labour markets); racial or ethnic discrimination; and the quality of their social ties in Canada.

None of the nuance needed to answer the question of how many and what kind of immigrants have a positive or negative effect on society is reflected in a single, large number.

Absent a more complete picture of immigrant integration dynamics and outcomes, immigration targets can easily activate public anxieties about immigrants threatening social cohesion by increasing competition for resources like health care, housing, education and desirable jobs, or by creating what some might regard as too much socio-cultural diversity.

Scapegoating the stranger

This is evident in Québec Premier François Legault’s declaration last year that admitting more than 50,000 immigrants a year to the province would be “a bit suicidal.”

This statement followed former Québec immigration minister Jean Boulet’s claim that “80 per cent of immigrants (who) go to Montréal don’t work, don’t speak French or don’t adhere to the values of Québec society.”

Such statements are neither new nor exclusive to Québec.

Immigrants have long been the scapegoats for broader political failures. Just ask Georg Simmel, a Jewish sociologist in early 20th-century Germany, who identified “the stranger” as a key position in modern societies and one often held by immigrants.

Economic insiders but perpetual social outsiders, “strangers” are at once appreciated for their economic utility and easily declared an “inner enemy” when troubles arise.

The scapegoating of “the stranger” is politically expedient, as it allows both political leaders and dissatisfied citizens to avoid painful questions about the real sources of their troubles, including long-term trends in social, health and housing policies, which require sustained political efforts to fix.

Fuelling polarization

When immigration targets cause public anxiety, they can fuel political polarization and be used by politicians to justify harsh immigration policies.

Take the case in the United Kingdom. In 2010, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced that immigration needed to be limited to “tens of thousands” rather than “hundreds of thousands” of people per year to reduce pressure on public services.

Plucked out of thin air during a television appearance, the “tens of thousands” guesstimate, which became known as the “net migration target,” has had a large impact on policymaking and public perceptions of British immigration over the past decade.

The idea that there were too many immigrants being admitted by a factor of 10 helped to justify a new, restrictive immigration policy — as well as Brexit — as a means of limiting immigration from Europe under the European Union’s freedom of movement clause.

The target also became a justification for creating a hostile environment for immigrants in the United Kingdom, whereby controls on legal status have been integrated into everyday settings like classrooms, health-care facilities and workplaces.

Guesstimates like immigration targets can be useful and expedient for policymaking. But in the public arena, they need to be more fully understood if immigration debates are to be grounded in evidence.

Source: The problem with immigration targets: They’re ‘guesstimates’ easily misunderstood by the public

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Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull

2023/01/13 Leave a comment

Useful analysis:

Canada’s urban areas recently experienced their strongest population growth in at least two decades, after a weak expansion during the early stages of the pandemic.

Over the year ending July 1, 2022, the country’s census metropolitan areas (CMAs) grew 2.1 per cent – about 574,000 people – according to Statistics Canada estimates published Wednesday. That was the strongest pace of annual growth since the agency began publishing such figures in 2001.

It was a comeback of sorts for urban regions, which had grown just 0.5 per cent the previous year, lagging the growth in rural areas. The pandemic and its accompanying border restrictions led to a dramatic decline in immigration to Canada, while many urban residents decamped to smaller communities.

But as restrictions eased, immigration surged to record levels, helping drive most of the population increase in urban areas. Sixteen CMAs notched their strongest annual growth on record.

At the same time, some major cities are still seeing plenty of residents leave. The Toronto region, for one, is losing significantly more people to other parts of Canada than it is bringing in. Over the past year, its population growth was entirely driven by international migration, which includes permanent residents and foreign students.

Several economists tie the exodus to worsening home affordability, along with the rise of remote work. And as homes have gotten pricier in suburbs and exurbs, buyers are looking even further afield.

“This is not like 50 years ago, when people were leaving downtown Toronto and moving to Etobicoke,” said Mike Moffatt, the founding director of the PLACE Centre think tank, referring to the former suburb that is now part of the city of Toronto. “This is people moving to London or Moncton or basically outside of the economic region. So there is a fundamental difference.”

Indeed, Atlantic Canada is experiencing a boom. Moncton’s population rose 5.4 per cent over the year ending July 1, 2022, the most of any CMA. Halifax was the next highest, at 4.5 per cent. Charlottetown grew 4.2 per cent.

There was breadth to the expansion, too. The Calgary area grew 3.2 per cent, or roughly 50,000 people, its strongest pace since the mid-2000s. The Vancouver area added 2.8 per cent to its population. The populations of Barrie and London, Ont., rose 3.2 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively.

The Toronto region did grow – by 2.1 per cent, or more than 138,000 people. However, it saw a net intraprovincial loss of roughly 78,000 – which means that many more people left for other parts of Ontario than moved in. It was the most on record, and the outflow has accelerated in recent years, alongside rising home prices and rents. There has been a spike in the number of children leaving the city, suggesting that young families are getting priced out of the housing market and are looking elsewhere for properties.

The Montreal and Vancouver areas also saw net intraprovincial losses of about 29,500 and 14,300 people, respectively, over the past year. Over all, Montreal’s population grew just 0.9 per cent, outpacing only Thunder Bay (0.2 per cent) among CMAs.

Toronto is also losing people to other provinces. The region saw a net interprovincial outflow of roughly 21,400 residents, more than double the previous record for departures.

Mr. Moffatt said the concern is that cities such as Toronto will suffer a “hollowing out” of their middle classes, who can no longer afford to live there. This has implications for the labour market, he said, as many crucial workers – such as teachers and nurses – are forced to relocate.

“You basically have two extremes, where fairly wealthy and older households can make it work, then you have young students and people starting their careers who are sharing apartments,” he said.

On the flip side, the Calgary area swung to a net interprovincial gain of residents in what amounted to the largest inflow of people since the oil price collapse of 2014 to 2016.

Similarly, Halifax is drawing large numbers of people from outside Nova Scotia. The CMA notched a net interprovincial inflow of more than 8,000 people, a figure that has been rising steadily for years.

Brigitte Teleu, a local real estate agent, said upward of 30 per cent of her clients recently have been out-of-province buyers. Like much of the Maritimes, Halifax saw home prices surge during the boom period of 2020 and 2021.

“Our prices are still relatively low, even now, compared to the rest of Canada,” she said. “A lot of people are selling their homes in Toronto, and they have all the money to spare and they just buy a house upfront in cash.”

Canada is struggling to build enough homes for its rapidly growing population, especially with higher interest rates, which make construction costlier and qualifying for a mortgage even more difficult. The federal government, meanwhile, is pursuing record levels of immigration in the coming years, adding more demand for homes in short supply.

“I think we’re going to have an escalation of the current trends, where our cities are growing but at the same time we are losing a lot of young professionals to Alberta and Atlantic Canada” from Ontario, Mr. Moffatt said.

Source: Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull

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Mason: We have questions about Pierre Poilievre’s passport story

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

Good thorough exposé. Clever gimmicks need to reflect the reality, and be confirmed by the reality. To date, neither “True North” or Rebel Media have picked up Polievre’s claims:

Have you heard the one about the guy from Calgary who couldn’t attend his own wedding in Cuba because he didn’t have a passport?

Even better – it was all Justin Trudeau’s fault.

This remarkable tale, with an emphasis on tale, comes courtesy of the great storyteller himself, Pierre Poilievre. The federal Conservative Leader posted a video online last week in which he chronicled a random meeting he had recently at the Ottawa airport with a man who identified himself as Mustafa, from Calgary.

When Mr. Poilievre asked what he was doing in Ottawa, Mustafa said he was there to get a passport. “You can get a passport in Calgary,” the Opposition leader told the man. “I thought so too, but I applied 10 months ago and it became desperate because I have a wedding in Cuba for myself and I need to get my passport to get there.”

“When’s your wedding?” Mr. Poilievre apparently said.

Dramatic pause.

“Yesterday,” Mustafa is said to have answered.

When Mr. Poilievre asked where the bride-to-be was, Mustafa said she was in Cuba waiting for him with 20 of his best friends.

“This is how everything operates with Justin Trudeau,” Mr. Poilievre says into the camera. “People still waiting 10 months for a passport.”

I have questions. Many others have questions too. But I guess my first one is: Does Mustafa actually exist? Because I have suspicions and I’m not the only one.

After watching Mr. Poilievre’s video, which he posted on Twitter, I put a call out on the social media platform for anyone who had more information on the man named Mustafa. Did anyone know him or know anything about his circumstances? I directed the question to Mr. Poilievre’s office as well. The last time I looked, my tweet had almost 254,000 views and incited the hashtag #whereisMustafa. There was nothing from anyone who could substantiate any part of the story. (Many expressed skepticism about it.) However, plenty of people relayed how quickly they were able to get their passports after applying. Some in less than 10 days.

But let’s assume for the moment Mustafa does exist. My first question to him would be: why would you organize a wedding in Cuba and send your bride-to-be and all your friends there when you didn’t have a passport? I mean, seriously. Many would say Mustafa was pretty dumb to organize a destination wedding when he didn’t have the necessary documents to attend it.

There were avenues he could have explored to expedite the processing time for his application. He could have gone to a passport office, explained his circumstances, and paid extra to get it quicker. He could have contacted his MP. Mostly, he could have said to his fiancée: “You know, we should hold off until I actually have my passport in hand.”

Regardless, it’s a pretty poor example for Mr. Poilievre to be holding up of why “everything is broken in this country.”

It also has echoes of MP Mark Strahl’s infamous constituent “Briane,” the single mom from Chilliwack who the Conservative politician insisted had her bank account frozen over a $50 donation she made to the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. However, the RCMP and the finance ministry cast doubts on the story and Mr. Strahl refused to provide any further details about her identity.

But back to his boss.

At some point Mr. Poilievre needs to begin showing that he is prime ministerial material, that he has the gravitas to ascend to such an important position. Because up to now, he’s been one of the least serious Conservative leaders we have seen in some time.

Yes, he’s articulate and can make a great video. But mostly he’s demonstrated an ability to whip up fear and stoke anger. Every conceivable problem in this country he lays at the feet of Mr. Trudeau. His predecessor, Erin O’Toole, recently said that some of the “hyperaggressive” rhetoric his party has been associated with in the last while is slowly “normalizing rage and damaging our democracy.”

He could have been looking straight into the eyes of Mr. Poilievre when he said it.

There are many things that the Liberal government in Ottawa can and should be criticized for. Its fiscal and monetary policy. Debt. Immigration policy. Our shrinking middle-power status. These are big, heady matters that demand a thoughtful critique, not gimmicky, attention-getting videos that don’t offer solutions but are seemingly designed solely to assign blame and agitate the masses.

Whether Mustafa actually exists is not the question here. The question is why is Pierre Poilievre talking about him in the first place?

Source: We have questions about Pierre Poilievre’s passport story

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Cornellier: Besoin de Montréal

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note, Montreal vs the regions and the multiculturalism/interculturalism debates:

Si le Québec veut réussir dans le dossier de l’intégration des immigrants, il aura besoin de la contribution de la Ville de Montréal. C’est là, en effet, que la majorité des immigrants décident de vivre. En 2016, ces personnes représentaient 34,3 % de la population de Montréal, 28,5 % de celle de Laval et 20,3 % de celle de Longueuil. Dans le reste du Québec, les personnes immigrantes ne représentent qu’environ 4 % de la population. On voit donc toute l’importance qu’a la région montréalaise dans cette mission.

La Ville de Montréal est-elle à la hauteur des attentes québécoises dans ce dossier ? C’est la question que pose le politologue David Carpentier dans La métropole contre la nation ? (PUQ, 2022, 232 pages), un éclairant essai issu d’un mémoire de maîtrise. « Que fait concrètement la Ville de Montréal pour favoriser l’intégration de ces populations sur son territoire ? » demande Carpentier. Va-t-elle dans le sens préconisé par l’État québécois ou contredit-elle l’action de ce dernier ?

Carpentier est un chercheur. Son essai n’a rien de polémique. Il reste que sa conclusion selon laquelle « il se déploie ainsi dans la métropole une forme dissimulée de multiculturalisme donnant libre cours à une vie civique affranchie du cadre national » fera réagir à juste titre. Selon Carpentier, en effet, « les principes sur lesquels repose une certaine conception de l’intégration, établie par les processus démocratiques québécois, se voient court-circuités par la Ville de Montréal », sans véritable légitimité politique.

Selon la Constitution canadienne, l’immigration est une compétence partagée entre les provinces et l’État central. Les municipalités, quant à elles, jouissent des responsabilités que veulent bien leur déléguer les gouvernements provinciaux.

Au Québec, de plus, l’affaire se complique du fait que nous sommes une nation minoritaire dans un État dont la politique d’intégration, le multiculturalisme, entre en concurrence avec la nôtre, l’interculturalisme. À titre de « créatures de la province » sur le plan juridique, les municipalités devraient donc être soumises à l’application de la politique québécoise, mais un certain flou, dans cette dernière, vient gripper la machine.

Le multiculturalisme canadien est une politique officielle depuis 1971. Il « valorise la manifestation des particularismes d’ordre ethnoculturel, religieux et linguistique dans l’espace public », résume Carpentier, et affirme qu’il « n’existerait pas au pays une culture ou un groupe ayant préséance ». Comme le note le politologue, le Canada a beau jeu de ne pas insister sur la nécessité de l’intégration à une société d’accueil puisque la présence de cette dernière s’impose de fait, « étant donné le statut hégémonique de la tradition anglo-saxonne et sa réalité démographique majoritaire ».

Nation minoritaire, le Québec ne peut se permettre ce luxe, d’où son adhésion à l’interculturalisme, une « voie mitoyenne », précise Carpentier, entre l’assimilationnisme et le multiculturalisme. L’interculturalisme valorise le pluralisme, mais accorde une place prioritaire à la culture majoritaire d’accueil, à laquelle doivent s’intégrer les nouveaux arrivants et qui se fonde sur l’« égalité des genres, la démocratie, la laïcité, le français comme langue publique commune, l’État de droit [et] le respect des droits et libertés de la personne », résume le politologue. Or, ce modèle d’intégration n’a jamais été officialisé par le gouvernement du Québec, ce qui rend son application incertaine.

Dans certains documents publics, la Ville de Montréal affirme adhérer à un interculturalisme minimaliste. Dans les faits, toutefois, son action révèle souvent l’« adhésion tacite de la municipalité au modèle canadien et son contournement du discours que promeut l’État québécois », constate Carpentier.

Dans des interventions publiques, par exemple, le maire Coderre et la mairesse Plante ont tous deux plaidé pour une laïcité dite ouverte et pour plus de flexibilité dans l’usage de l’anglais. Ainsi, au nom de la différence montréalaise, ils ont contesté deux des principaux socles de l’interculturalisme québécois.

Selon Carpentier, les acteurs de la politique montréalaise d’intégration se diviseraient en deux camps : les partisans de l’interculturalisme, principalement des fonctionnaires et des chercheurs, et ceux du multiculturalisme, qu’on retrouve surtout chez les élus et les acteurs associatifs. Pour le moment, à cause du flou juridique et politique entourant le statut de l’interculturalisme, ce sont les seconds qui s’imposent, entraînant ainsi une dramatique « déconnexion » entre la métropole et le reste du Québec.

Qu’attend donc le gouvernement du Québec pour faire de l’interculturalisme sa politique d’intégration officielle sur tout le territoire national ? Ça devrait faire partie d’un programme sérieux de réveil national.

Source: Besoin de Montréal

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Poilievre mum on Tory MP’s ‘illegal refugees’ comment, calls for Roxham Road closure

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note. He should know better than making the statement “It is not legal to cross there. That is a reality. It is not legal to cross there.” given that it is legal, if not desirable :

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called for the closure of the Roxham Road irregular border crossing on Tuesday, but sidestepped questions about one of his MPs denying help to a family who used it to enter the country.

During a news conference on Parliament Hill,his first of 2023,he told reporters that he favours legal immigration but can understand the desperation that leads migrants to cross into Canada through the unofficial entry point south of Montreal.

“I understand why desperate people are trying to cross there,” he said. “Our system is now so slow and so broken.”

Poilievre pointed to the fact that the federal immigration department currently has a backlog of nearly 1.1 million applications to process, which was higher under periods of lockdown during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reported that as of the end of November, it had 1.09 million applications in the queue that exceed the department’s service standard, a problem that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has committed to tackle.

The Tory leader argued Tuesday that fixing the problem could lead to fewer people crossing through unofficial entry points such as Roxham Road.

“It is not legal to cross there. That is a reality. It is not legal to cross there.”

Thousands of asylum-seekers have entered the country between official ports of entry in recent years and then made refugee claims once in Canada.

Those who come from the United States via official crossings can be turned away under Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S., on the basis that claimants have access to fair asylum processes south of the border.

Radio-Canada reported last month that Quebec Conservative MP Richard Martel recently refused to help a family that was facing deportation after having entered Canada through Roxham Road in 2018, calling them “illegal refugees.”

Poilievre did not directly answer when asked about Martel’s comments Tuesday, but said the Liberal government should renegotiate the Canada-U.S. agreement “in order to close Roxham Road.”

He said Trudeau must fix the system so that people enter through official entry points, instead: “Renegotiate the deal with the Americans, and speed up the processing of immigration generally.”

In December, in a French interview with The Canadian Press,José Nicola Lopez said that his sister-in-law Leticia Cruz and her son had crossed into Canada via Roxham Road to join their relatives in 2018.

He said she did so because she feared expulsion under former president Donald Trump’s policies, and was afraid that a possible return to her home country of El Salvador could make her a target for street gangs.

Lopez said at the time that he found Martel’s comments to be “offensive” and “ignorant.” After Cruz was unable to get help from Martel, whose Chicoutimi-area riding she and her son call home, Bloc Québécois MP Mario Simard said he worked with Immigration Minister Sean Fraser to help the family avoid deportation.

Fraser, the Bloc and the NDP criticized Martel’s comments as lacking compassion.

In a recent interview with Radio-Canada, Martel declined to offer specifics about the case.

Speaking in French, he said the case was complex and that he declined to help knowing that the Bloc were in a position to do so. He said he would likely make the same decision if a similar file came across his desk, adding it’s a matter of “values.”

Source: Poilievre mum on Tory MP’s ‘illegal refugees’ comment, calls for Roxham Road closure

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Philip Cross: Reality’s insoluble trilemma: More people, more wealth, more green? Choose two

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

While overly ideological in substance and wording, Cross does have a point regarding trade-offs in both the Canadian and international contexts:

Collectivists subscribe to the fantasy that we humans can simultaneously expand our population, reduce our environmental footprint and continue to enjoy rising per capita incomes. This displays an utter lack of awareness that the three are a trilemma at the global level. In a trilemma you can achieve only two of your three goals simultaneously; whichever two we select, the other necessarily falls by the wayside. Fortunately, the choice is not hard for sensible people to make.

Most of the Left clearly supports an expanding human population. This is implicit in their belief, which they share with just about everyone, that every individual has worth — and deserves, they would add,  support such as universal health care and a basic income. Demographers agree population will continue to increase from its current eight billion to somewhere between 10 and 11 billion people. Most members of the Left will not object.

At the same time, collectivists regard any recession in incomes or rise in unemployment as intolerable. Witness their near-hysterical reaction to the tightening of monetary policy in response to the inevitable surge in inflation following excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus during the pandemic. The Left does tolerate chronic slow growth in developed nations — though without conceding that the taxes and regulations it favours often cause it. Economic growth is even more imperative for the hundreds of millions of people in other countries still living in “where will my next meal come from?” poverty.

Finally, the Left holds that the environment and all plant and animal life are sacred. Humans should therefore save the environment and protect the planet whatever it costs. The completely unrealistic goal is to freeze nature in its current state. But “protecting the planet” at all costs is fundamentally anti-human. We exist and thrive because of our ability to control the planet’s environment. As documented by the economic historian Robert Fogel, this control allowed an explosive increase in human numbers and longevity over the last three centuries, while the average body size of adults expanded 50 per cent as our living standard soared.

Something has got to give. We cannot have more people, rising incomes, and a smaller environmental footprint at the same time. If we continue to expand population and raise incomes, there is bound to be a growing impact on the environment as demand rises for land, food, energy and water. We can try to limit our per capita consumption of resources but more people and rising incomes will put relentless upward pressure on total consumption.

The only way to reconcile rising population and a lower environmental impact would be to sharply reduce the resources available to the average person. This would entail not just a short-lived recession — which we heard repeatedly in 2022 is unacceptable — but a drastic reduction in living standards, which would be especially harsh for the world’s poor

Our final option would be to minimize our environmental impact while maintaining high living standards. But this would require sharply reducing the number of people, which contradicts the goal of a growing population. In his recent book Fossil Future, Alex Epstein cites a biologist who wrote that “Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” Such anti-human attitudes are repugnant to most people.

If curtailing the number of humans is immoral, while engineering a sharp reduction in our standard of living is unacceptable, the only option left to us is to accept that a planet with more humans enjoying rising incomes inevitably will have a growing impact on the environment. The renowned economic historian Douglas North was frank in his description of how “a necessary precondition to understanding the evolving human environment is understanding the revolutionary changes resulting in the ‘conquest’ of the physical environment.” Epstein echoes that sentiment, noting that much of the improvement in the human condition has resulted from our increasing ability to control an often-hostile environment while extracting more of the planet’s bountiful resources; in his words, eliminating human impact “is an anti-human moral goal.”

The global challenge is to minimize our environmental footprint without compromising either human health or rising incomes. It is simply unrealistic to say we can increase our population, maintain our standard of living and lift billions of people out of abject poverty without impacting the planet’s environment. You can only choose two of these goals, and it is obvious which two most people will opt for.

Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Philip Cross: Reality’s insoluble trilemma: More people, more wealth, more green? Choose two

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The world’s most powerful passport for 2023 revealed

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

The usual marketing by Henley & Partners. Bit of a silly list as visa free travel is not the only reason the rich and ultra rich choose to obtain citizenship-by-investment:
A trio of Asian passports offer their holders greater global travel freedom than those of any other countries, according to a new quarterly report released by London-based global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners.
Japanese citizens enjoy visa-free or visa-on-demand access to a record 193 destinations around the world, just ahead of Singapore and South Korea whose citizens can freely visit 192.
And now that Asia-Pacific is opening up post-Covid, its citizens are more likely to be making use of that travel freedom again.
Global travel is now at around 75% of pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest release by Henley Passport Index, which is based on data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
Below the Asian top three, a glut of European countries sit near the top of the leaderboard. Germany and Spain are tied on 190 destinations, followed by Finland, Italy, Luxembourg on 189.
Then there’s Austria, Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden all tied in fifth place, while France, Ireland, Portugal and United Kingdom are at No. 6.
New Zealand and the United States make an appearance at No. 7, alongside Belgium, Norway, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
Afghan nationals sit at the bottom of the index once again, and can access just 27 countries without requiring a visa in advance.

Other indexes

Henley & Partner’s list is one of several indexes created by financial firms to rank global passports according to the access they provide to their citizens.
The Henley Passport Index ranks 199 passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa. It’s updated in real time throughout the year, as and when visa policy changes come into effect.
Arton Capital’s Passport Index takes into consideration the passports of 193 United Nations member countries and six territories — ROC Taiwan, Macau (SAR China), Hong Kong (SAR China), Kosovo, Palestinian Territory and the Vatican. Territories annexed to other countries are excluded.
It’s also updated in real time throughout the year, but its data is gathered by close monitoring of individual governments’ portals. It’s a tool “for people who travel, to provide accurate, simple-to-acess information for their travel needs,” Arton Capital’s founder Armand Arton told CNN in December.
Arton’s Global Passport Power Rank 2023 puts the United Arab Emirates in the top spot, with a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 181.
As for second place, that’s held by 11 countries, most of which are in Europe: Germany, Sweden, Finland, Luxembourg, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and South Korea.
The United States and the UK are at No.3, alongside Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, Poland, Ireland and New Zealand.

The best passports to hold in 2023, according to the Henley Passport Index

1. Japan (193 destinations)
2. Singapore, South Korea (192 destinations)
3. Germany, Spain (190 destinations)
4. Finland, Italy, Luxembourg (189 destinations)
5. Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden (188 destinations)
6. France, Ireland, Portugal, United Kingdom (187 destinations)
7. Belgium, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, United States, Czech Republic (186 destinations)
8. Australia, Canada, Greece, Malta (185 destinations)
9. Hungary, Poland (184 destinations)
10. Lithuania, Slovakia (183 destinations)

The worst passports to hold in 2023, according to the Henley Passport Index

Several countries around the world have visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 40 or fewer countries. These include:
102. North Korea (40 destinations)
103. Nepal, Palestinian territory (38 destinations)
104. Somalia (35 destinations)
105. Yemen (34 destinations)
106. Pakistan (32 destinations)
107. Syria (30 destinations)
108. Iraq (29 destinations)
109. Afghanistan (27 destinations)

Source: The world’s most powerful passport for 2023 revealed

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

ICYMI: N.S. judge banishes dual U.S.-Canadian citizen from country for 2 years, calls ruling ‘extremely extraordinary’

2023/01/11 Leave a comment

Strange case of banishment, share concerns limitation of mobility and right of return rights:

A provincial court judge in Shelburne, N.S., has banished a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen from the country temporarily for five years in what he described as an “extremely extraordinary” sentencing.

Allen Desrosiers, 64, was charged with two counts of criminal harassment last month after he was accused of stalking a 25-year-old woman in Yarmouth on two occasions, in October and December respectively.

The RCMP also issued a public notification in December describing Desrosiers as a high-risk offender.

Source: N.S. judge banishes dual U.S.-Canadian citizen from country for 2 years, calls ruling ‘extremely extraordinary’

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