Canadian officials knew for years existing laws didn’t curb foreign influence

2022/12/05 Leave a comment

Sigh….:

Canadian officials have known for years that the country’s existing laws did not cover foreign governments’ interference in domestic politics, documents reviewed by Global News suggest

The documents were unearthed just as Canada’s public safety minister said the government was looking at ways to beef up its defence against foreign influence in domestic affairs.

December 2020 emails at Global Affairs Canada, obtained by Global News under access to information law, state that officials were aware that some types of foreign influence in Canadian politics slipped through the cracks of existing laws. Examples in the documents include foreign investment in university research, as well as “communications activities” to promote foreign agendas.

Canadian intelligence officials and Parliament’s national security committee have cautioned for years that foreign governments – most notably China, Russia, and Iran – are actively trying to influence Canadian affairs. Some of this activity is overt, while other influence operations remain in the shadows.

The documents reviewed by Global News were part of preparations for a House of Commons speech by former Global Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne on the issue of Chinese interference in Canadian politics.

The speech, drafted for a December late debate in the House of Commons at the prompting of the opposition Conservatives, originally suggested existing laws were sufficient to curb foreign influence. But an objection from a foreign affairs bureaucrat – their name was censored in the documents – cautioned that wasn’t true.

“There are several situations not covered by the Lobbying Act and the Conflict of Interest Act, such as for instance an agent undertaking communication activity or engaging in a big disbursement of activities on behalf of a foreign government,” the email reads.

“Some of these activities would be covered if happening under election periods by the Canada Elections Act, but foreign interference is not limited to those periods.”

The official gave the example of foreign powers funding university research “in order to promote certain narratives or muzzle others.” Canada’s intelligence agencies – including the Canadians Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) – have recently dramatically increased their partnerships with university research institutions, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis.

The spy agencies were concerned that hostile foreign powers – notably China and Russia – would attempt to harvest cutting-edge pandemic research from Canada’s universities and health networks.

While officials have known for years that existing laws did not adequately cover Canada from foreign intervention, Ottawa has been reluctant to bring in new powers – such as a registry of people engaged by foreign powers to try and influence Canadian policy.

On Friday, The Canadian Press reported that Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino is considering taking that step – as close security allies like the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have done.

“The fact is that the landscape of foreign interference is becoming increasingly complex … One of the proposals that we are looking very carefully at is the creation of a foreign agent registry,” Mendicino said in an interview.

“We hope to have more to say about that in the very short term. But we are very much looking forward to going out and having a good consultation.”

Global News reported in November that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his cabinet were briefed in January 2022 that the Chinese Consulate in Toronto directed a clandestine election interference network in 2019. Intelligence sources told Global News that it included a loosely-affiliated group of Liberals and Conservatives which benefited from funding from the Chinese Communist Party to help advance Beijing’s political objectives in Canada.

Other intelligence sources told Global News the consulate disbursed $250,000 through proxies to the network, which allegedly included an Ontario MPP and at least 11 federal candidates. Intelligence sources now tell Global News that as many as 14 political staffers were involved in the network.

While the briefings did not conclude that Beijing funded campaigns directly, that is how Trudeau and political leaders have chosen to interpret the reporting in House of Commons debates.

But the internal government documents reviewed by Global News suggest that, just over a year after the 2019 campaign, Global Affairs Canada was working on a cost benefit analysis about introducing a registry of foreign agents operating in Canada.

“(We are) currently working on a note that assess the pros and cons of the U.S. and Australian legislations to inform future (Government of Canada) policy development and decision making,” the unnamed official wrote in December 2020.

Kenny Chiu, a former Conservative MP who lost his Richmond, B.C., seat in the 2021 election, proposed a similar registry ahead of the general election. The bill went nowhere – dying when the election was called – and Chiu blames his loss, in part, on his stance against Beijing’s interference.

The 2020 Global Affairs documents noted some questions about the efficacy of foreign agent registries, which have subsequently been adopted by Tory government in the U.K. Referring to the Australian example, the email noted that legal scholars have called into question that country’s foreign agent transparency regime on human rights concerns.

That debate has yet to begin in Canada, but if Mendicino’s comments Friday are to be believed, it’s about to.Beijing has denied any attempt to meddle in Canada’s affairs – a claim belied by Parliament’s national security committee and the country’s intelligence agencies.

Source: Canadian officials knew for years existing laws didn’t curb foreign influence

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Cdn. tech sector participation and pay gaps persist and in some cases, worsen: report

2022/12/03 Leave a comment

Of note. More analysis on the reasons why would be helpful.:

A new report shows women, people of colour and immigrants in Canada’s tech sector saw employment and pay inequities persist — and in some cases, worsen — between 2001 and 2016.

The research from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Toronto Metropolitan University was published Thursday and shows women were increasingly excluded from tech work throughout that period.

“It’s infuriating to see that we’re exactly where we started 20 years ago now,” said Viet Vu, the institute’s manager of economic research and lead author of the report called “Further and Further Away: Canada’s unrealized digital potential.”

His research showed women had a 6.29 per cent chance of being a tech worker in 2001, but by 2016, that had fallen to 4.91 per cent.

Meanwhile, men had a 20 per cent chance of being a tech worker, which remained unchanged between 2001 and 2016.

In the past 20 years, women have become even more educated, so Vu thinks it isn’t aptitude fuelling the exclusion. Instead, he puts some of the blame on workplace attitudes and phenomena that limit their participation like gender violence and sexual harassment.

His research also delved into disparities in pay. He uncovered that men made an average of $3.49 more per hour than women between 2001 and 2016. That equates to an average of $7,200 in lost income every year.

Identifying as a visible minority also lowered one’s pay by an average $3.89 per hour.

The report said an immigrant woman identifying as a visible minority and engaging in tech work without a university degree in Canada, on average, is expected to make $18.5 per hour less than a white, non-immigrant man with a university degree.

That amounts to a difference in $38,000 in annual income.

If the man in this scenario had a university degree, he would make on average $8.94 per hour more.

Researchers also observed no pay gap between immigrant and non-immigrant tech workers in 2001, but by 2016, a gap of roughly $5.70 per hour emerged.

Over the 15-year period studied, the gap amounted to roughly $4.40 per hour.

Such findings made Vu sad because they revealed “massive missed opportunities.”

“We could have invested in making tech more inclusive, we could invest in allowing more folks to get into tech work, but we see fairly little done,” he said.

He hopes the report will spark change because he sees identifying inequities as the first step in working toward parity.

He also believes the country and its next sector needs to examine why its current investments and strategies haven’t yielded results.

“Maybe we can figure out what does seem to work, how we can tweak it, how we can actually fix it… so it doesn’t stay status quo anymore.”

Source: Cdn. tech sector participation and pay gaps persist and in some cases, worsen: report

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Csernyik: Canada’s overly educated work force is nothing to be proud of

2022/12/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Valid points on the imbalance, most of the labour pressures are in trades and service jobs:

Several months after receiving my second bachelor’s degree, I found myself working behind an espresso machine once again. When I graduated from high school in 2004, postsecondary education was presented as the ticket to high salaries and trappings of middle-class life such as home ownership.

Instead, my generation graduated from university into a global recession, followed by rising home and living costs and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The conventional wisdom was thrown on its head. Today, with the exception of certain professions, higher education guarantees little to workers.

This week, Statistics Canada released 2021 census results that show our nation has the G7′s most educated work force, with 57.5 per cent of Canadians aged 25 to 64 possessing college or university credentials. The number of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher has increased by nearly one-fifth since the 2016 census, largely due to highly-credentialed recent immigrants.

While Statscan acknowledges some of this education may be underused, the milestone is presented as a feat worth celebrating. But in our current economic climate, especially when some industries suffer from outsized vacancies – the spinoff effects felt broadly by Canadians – it feels like a vanity metric.

Statscan notes this level of educated workers helps Canada meet labour market needs today and will do so in the future, and that it’s “essential to maintaining our standard of living as a country.” But shortfalls in certain job categories – including those that don’t require postsecondary education – are impacting that standard of living in tangible ways.

Reduced business hours and slower service due to a lack of staff in retail and food service businesses have been problems since the pandemic started, and show no sign of waning. Accommodation and food services, one of the leading job vacancy categories, continues to struggle to fill positions despite help wanted signs blanketing communities across the country.

This is also true in industries such as construction, which lack enough skilled tradespeople to fill roles and are necessary for building new housing and infrastructure. Working-age holders of apprenticeship certificates in fields such as repair technologies and construction and mechanical trades have “stagnated or fallen,” according to Statscan’s findings.

It’s notable that low-wage customer service work and skilled trades, despite their importance to our economy, are still given short shrift in political and public discussion. This leads to little advancement on critical issues such as wages, which can explain, at least in part, why these positions are tough to fill now. But these positions are frequently – and incorrectly – seen as roles people only do if they haven’t gone to university, as though they are jobs of last resort.

Slightly less than 25 per cent of minimum-wage employees had a postsecondary diploma or higher in 1998, but by 2018 that was slightly more than one in three. Having worked in these roles with postsecondary credentials, I’ve been one of these people and have worked with many others. Critically, some of the new immigrants contributing to this mismatch are underemployed – including in minimum-wage jobs. Statscan even acknowledges “the educational qualifications of some foreign-educated workers being underused.”

My first-hand experience has also shown me how little attention is paid to working conditions, wages and other concerns of sub-white-collar-workers in Canada. Yet people not wanting these jobs is often categorized as a failure on the part of workers, rather than a systemic one.

It feels like an offshoot of the credentialism that has been rampant in North American society for years. This has led to headline-making grade inflation in high schools, which has students entering postsecondary programs with puffed-up marks. Then, once at university, there’s a mismatch between classes and programs available and what’s needed in the work force.

Skills gaps are high in all industries – an average of 56.1 per cent of employees are not proficient enough to do their job, according to Statscan. But the gaps surge to nearly 80 per cent in accommodation and food services, and 67.8 per cent in retail trade, two categories that employ millions of Canadians, but which are often left out of the skills and training discussion in favour of more white-collar pursuits such as computer science.

For many workers in this country, the earnings power education is supposed to create isn’t the case. That’s why attention should be turned to what can be done in fields such as retail, food services and skilled trades in order to fill the positions that help keep our country running. This involves everything from living wages, to housing affordability initiatives – so workers can afford to live in the communities where they work – to shedding societal stigmas about these careers.

As COVID-19 recedes, there’s an opportunity to review our perspective on credentialism and, more critically, a need. Metrics such as being the most educated work force look good on paper. But as labour shortages disrupt day-to-day Canadian life, those metrics feel hollow and, at worst, like a distraction from finding solutions for increasing employment in industries that don’t get enough thoughtful care and consideration from policy makers and the public.

Let’s get these sorted out instead of throwing our caps in the air.

Rob Csernyik is a freelance journalist who is writing a book about minimum-wage work.

Source: Canada’s overly educated work force is nothing to be proud of

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‘This is not inclusion’: Canadian hockey parents frustrated as foreign-born kids asked to apply for transfer

2022/12/03 Leave a comment

Weird requirements at that level:

Mark Donkers of Sarnia, Ont., is your typical hockey-loving Canadian kid. The 11-year-old is proud to play for the under-12 BB Sarnia Sting junior team.

But while he wears the same jersey as his teammates — the one with the angry bee logo —  Mark was told last month he couldn’t keep playing on the team until he provided more documentation, because he wasn’t born in Canada.

Mark has been playing hockey for years and the request came a week before a tournament in Kitchener.

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

Canada’s Growing Problem with Trust in Government

2022/12/02 Leave a comment

Almost a rant, but legitimately so (passports backlogs have largely been addressed, with Service Canada issuing more passports than applications September-November):

The strength of liberal democracies like Canada’s is often measured in terms of social cohesion. It’s the glue that holds society together — the common values and goals shared by citizens that inspire trust in each other and in our country’s institutions.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines a society as cohesive if “it works towards the well-being of all its members, fights exclusion and marginalization, creates a sense of belonging, promotes trust, and offers its members the opportunity of upward social mobility.”

Social cohesion is much more than “campfires and kumbaya.” Cohesive countries are politically stable, their citizens respect laws and they have robust institutions that reflect competence and trusted governance. As Donald Savoie, the Canadian public services guru, wrote in the Globe and Mail last summer, “The rule of law, sustained economic development, the ability to pursue the national interest, and the need to deal with society’s wicked problems require these institutions to function well.”

Governments are judged by what they do, but it’s useful to distinguish between the normal back and forth of politics, and the specific actions of governments that truly build or diminish social cohesion. Political partisanship is largely irrelevant to trust in government and is regularly discounted by citizens; it’s the policies and programs and how they are implemented that are more likely to impact how we feel about the quality of public governance. In addition, the loud political disagreements of the day often obscure the ultimate impacts of public policy issues on social cohesion.

In the mid-1960s, successive minority governments and the bitter partisan battles between Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and Opposition Leader John Diefenbaker dominated the political headlines. But despite the day-to-day rancour, those P parliaments also put in the place the basic architecture of this country’s modern welfare state – medicare, the Québec and Canada Pension Plans, the Canada Assistance Plan and national student loans – vital public services that over time became highly prized by citizens. It was only with the perspective of history that Canadians saw how they performed and realized their value.

Canada has traditionally been a “peaceable kingdom,” enjoying traditionally high levels of social cohesion on many fronts. Our political institutions are stable and accessible. Public and charitable programs to help the disadvantaged are relatively strong. We value our health care system as a right of citizenship. Collectively we are a welcoming people and understand that our low birth rate means that we need immigrants if we are to keep economic growth and prosperity rolling.

But only six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, polls began to chart the erosion of social cohesion in Canada and around the world. In October 2020, IPSOS found that “more Canadians have “weak” (30 percent) than “solid” (26 percent) social cohesion.” By March of this year, IPSOS reported that Canadians’ “trust in government to do what is right” had dropped from 58% in late 2020 to 43%. Equally troubling, the survey found that “In Canada, only 33 percent  of citizens believe that most people can be trusted, against 67 percent who believe that you can’t be too careful dealing with people.” Similarly troubling are reports from news organizations that their own research shows a decline in trust in the work that they do.

More recently, there is evidence of additional damage to social cohesion resulting from perceptions of how our federal system works. The Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) published a “Resentment Index,” indicating that “Canadians in every province are resentful about their province’s place in the federation.” While feelings of resentment are strongest in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador:

  • “On average residents of all provinces think the region where they live contributes more than its fair share.”
  • In the Prairie provinces, “the sense that they contribute more than their fair share is combined with the view that Quebec contributes less.”
  • The practice of asymmetrical federalism (the practice by which national arrangements apply differently to Québec) is seen in the rest of the country as a special benefit for that province.

The authors conclude that alienation is rooted in zero-sum perceptions about how the country works: resentment of Québec is the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed.

There’s no doubt the pandemic stressed Canadians as no other recent event has done. To lead the fight against COVID-19, governments intervened  in people’s personal lives as never before with lockdowns, vaccine mandates and school closures, and for some, this stirred feelings of fear and anger. The resulting bonfire of grievances let loose some nasty demons that are likely to be with us for a long time: many politicians and public officials at all levels still experience personal insults and public threats just for doing their jobs. And the pandemic also highlighted failures in state capacity at all levels and a startling lack of competence that is diminishing trust in government on several fronts.

Nowhere are these failures as stark as in health care. COVID-19 placed intolerable strains on the system, and it is still struggling to address huge surgery backlogs and deliver basic services. Nationally, the pediatric care system is overwhelmed, with some children’s hospitals operating at 180 percent of capacity. Provinces have major problems keeping and finding doctors and nurses, but Canada is the only developed country without a national health care human resources strategy. More than six million Canadians do not have a family doctor. My wife and I have personal knowledge of this problem – we are among that number.

These challenges are a wake-up call for those of us who thought Canada was on the right track on health care. In 2020, Canada spent 12.2 percent of its GDP on health, more than any other countries in the OECD except the US, Germany and the Netherlands. But what do we get for all that money? Not nearly enough. In 2021, a multi-nation study by the Commonwealth Fund found that Canada placed 10th among 11 high income countries in terms of access to health care and its quality, the administrative efficiency of the system, equity and health care outcomes. Only the US fared worse in the performance rankings.

While Canadian health care is on the verge of collapse and crying out for reform and innovation, the federal and provincial governments are locked in a squabble over transfer payments and control over an increasingly failing system. The provinces want money for health care with no strings attached while the federal government wants assurances that its additional dollars will buy much-needed reforms.

While the stand-off continues, due to higher energy prices, a more buoyant economy and inflation, the federal government and most provinces are awash in cash, and several are eying budgetary surpluses in the near term. While a few provinces are investing to fix health care, others have spent billions in taxpayer kickbacks such as cancelled taxes on gasoline, abolition of auto licence fees, or simply to create a rosy glow among voters before their next election. It’s both sad and ironic that health care, which has done so much to build social cohesion, is now diminishing trust in governments’ capacity to deliver the country’s most treasured public program.

What’s happening in health care is closely matched by what’s been revealed at the recent public hearings of the Public Order Emergency Commission on the invoking of the Emergencies Act. It’s been a master class in provincial/municipal dysfunction in crisis management and policing. The disclosure that members of the Ottawa police, the OPP and the RCMP were leaking policing plans to the demonstrators, and to the far right-group Diagolon, is particularly chilling. If the police lack the leadership, capacity and will to uphold the rule of law, it’s no wonder that public trust in institutions is plummeting.

Meanwhile, Canadians continue to face other reminders of diminished institutional capacity and performance. Waiting for passports is still an eight-to nine-month challenge, long after the federal government promised it was on the way to be fixed. This fall, thousands of international students coming to Canadian universities and colleges met weeks of delays in receiving their study permits, as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) struggled with a backlog of 1.5 million applications for study permits and other temporary resident visas, further diminishing Canada’s reputation for simple competence in providing necessary services.

For immigration generally, as of October 31, IRCC had roughly 2.2 million applications in its inventory, with around 1.2 million in backlog, meaning that they exceed the department’s service standards. As the Globe and Mail recently reported, these processing delays have caused a surge in mandamus applications, a legal procedure aimed at achieving a court order that tells the department to do its job. Eight hundred such applications were filed in federal court last year and another 709 so far this year; and 333 came from people in the economic streams of immigration, the very people Canada needs most. These delays are just another example of high-sounding policy promises made by government being sandbagged by a failure to deliver. It seems the government’s earlier focus on “deliverology” has been forgotten.

Another spectacular policy and implementation failure is the federal protection program for air travellers seeking compensation for travel delays. The Airline Passenger Protection Regulations spell out the conditions under which air carriers must compensate passengers who have experienced cancellations or delays, including arranging alternate flights, providing refunds or paying compensation.

The large airline carriers have been playing fast and loose with these requirements for as long as they have existed. They regularly deny compensation by claiming that crew shortages caused the delay or cancellation, but the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTC), the complaints adjudication body for the regulations, says “Crew shortages are within the airline’s control, unless the airline could not have prevented the flight disruption despite proper planning.”

In the 2021-22 fiscal year, the CTC received 28,673 complaints, up from 26,742 a year earlier. By the end of this November, the agency had received another 19,000 complaints since April. The backlog of complaints now totals a stunning 30,000, meaning the CTC is yet another federal agency overwhelmed in doing its job. It’s difficult to imagine a government that doesn’t recognize that with over 47,000 citizen complaints over two years a system is not working and take steps to fix it. Insult is added to injury when the complaints systems for failing programs are themselves swamped by public demand and do not perform with speed and efficiency.

The ubiquity and reach of social media have raised the stakes for governments at all levels to deliver public programs on which millions of people depend competently and effectively. When public-facing services fail or triumph, the performance of governments is available for all to see. With faults and failures instantly apparent, the resulting anger of citizens is amplified by social media and seen by millions in the global commons. The result is a destructive cycle of disappointment, leading to grievance and anger, and further distrust of government institutions. The message that “everything seems broken in Canada” is gaining in resonance.

Governments at all levels face peril if they ignore their responsibility for delivering necessary services smartly, effectively and on time. Canada’s social cohesion, along with the public’s trust in our institutions of governance, are at stake.

Contributing Writer Geoff Norquay was Senior Adviser on Social Policy to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and later served as Director of Communications in the Opposition Leader’s Office under Stephen Harper.  He is a Principal of Earnscliffe Strategies in Ottawa.

Source: Canada’s Growing Problem with Trust in Government

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USA: Asylum rates drop as immigration cases are fast-tracked, research finds

2022/12/02 Leave a comment

Balance between speed/efficiency and fairness, there are trade-offs:

Fast-tracked immigration cases appear to be hurting migrants’ chances of being granted asylum, researchers are finding.

“The big takeaway message is that the Biden administration really is trying to speed up cases but data shows when you speed up cases they lose,” Syracuse University professor and researcher Austin Kocher told Border Report as he toured the South Texas border on Wednesday.

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, orTRAC, one of the nation’s leading researchers on immigration court cases, on Tuesday released a study that found that since July, asylum grant rates have fallen and it “coincides with the extremely rapid increase in expedited cases.”

Although Fiscal Year 2022 had the largest number of individuals granted asylum of any year in immigration court history, in digging into the data, researchers found that the quicker the cases went through the courts, the lower the asylum seekers’ chances.

TRAC found that when asylum cases were completed within three to 18 months, only 31% of cases were granted asylum.

“More asylum cases were granted last year than any other year but the grant rate is actually going down in recent months,” Kocher said.

(TRAC Graphic)

Border Report met up with Kocher on Wednesday as he was on day 5 of his visit to South Texas as part of a seven-week research tour of the entire Southwest border.

He said immigration cases require collecting massive amounts of evidence and documents, and TRAC data has found that migrants who retain lawyers have a higher chance of being granted asylum. He said the rushed cases could be limiting and preventing asylum-seekers from gathering all the data they need to present full cases to the judges, and it could be preventing them from getting legal counsel altogether.

“We definitely know that the Biden administration has tried to accelerate these cases to try to clear out the backlog,” Kocher said. “They really are taking the backlog seriously and they really do want asylum cases to get decided more quickly but the problem is, as the data shows, that if you really speed cases up individuals don’t always have time to get attorneys and they don’t always have time to gather the full application materials that are necessary.”

Kocher crossed into Reynosa, Mexico, early Wednesday, and said he spoke with several migrants there who expressed their lack of resources and lack of legal aid as they wait across the border due to Title 42 restrictions.

Source: Asylum rates drop as immigration cases are fast-tracked, research finds

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Dutrisac: La loi 96 ne suffira  pas [#cdnimm aspects]

2022/12/02 Leave a comment

Yet more, highlight temporary foreign workers and that about half are working in English:

Dans son discours d’ouverture de la 43e législature à l’Assemblée nationale, le premier ministre François Legault a reconnu que l’application des dispositions de la loi 96 sur la langue commune, adoptée en mai dernier, ne suffira pas à stopper le déclin du français. « On ne doit pas en rester là », a-t-il dit.

À juste titre, François Legault estime qu’il « est impératif de mettre fin à ce déclin et de renverser la tendance ». Il y voit son « premier devoir » comme premier ministre du seul État à majorité francophone en Amérique du Nord. Ce déclin est en effet « existentiel », comme il l’a affirmé, dans le sens qu’il détermine l’existence même de la nation québécoise.

Le premier ministre a mandaté le titulaire du nouveau ministère de la Langue française, Jean-François Roberge, pour concevoir un « tableau de bord » affichant des indicateurs et des projections mis à jour tous les ans sur l’état de la situation linguistique au lieu de s’en tenir aux données quinquennales produites par Statistique Canada. Les mesures seront ainsi ajustées afin de « remettre le Québec sur la trajectoire d’une relance du français ». Mais ça reste du domaine de l’intention.

Devant les refus répétés de Justin Trudeau, François Legault n’a pas tout à fait renoncé à obtenir davantage de pouvoirs en immigration de la part d’Ottawa. Mais, il semble évident que ses attentes sont aujourd’hui réduites. Avant la campagne électorale, le premier ministre se faisait fort d’obtenir d’Ottawa un transfert de pouvoirs en immigration pour éviter la « louisianisation » du Québec. Aujourd’hui, il demande à Jean-François Roberge, qui est aussi le ministre responsable des Relations canadiennes, d’élaborer, avec la ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, Christine Fréchette, « une base de négociation précise » afin d’entamer des discussions avec le gouvernement fédéral sur les enjeux de la langue et de l’immigration.

Avant de réclamer davantage de pouvoirs au gouvernement fédéral en matière d’immigration, encore faut-il utiliser pleinement ceux que Québec possède déjà. On parle beaucoup du seuil de 50 000 immigrants admis annuellement, c’est-à-dire le nombre de nouveaux arrivants, souvent déjà présents sur le territoire, qui obtiennent leur résidence permanente. Mais on oublie l’immigration temporaire, que ce soit les travailleurs et les étudiants. Par exemple, plus de 60 000 travailleurs étrangers sont présents au Québec en vertu du Programme de mobilité internationale administré par le gouvernement fédéral. Selon une évaluation du ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, environ la moitié de ces travailleurs étrangers travaillent en anglais. On compte également plus de 90 000 étudiants étrangers dans nos cégeps et universités, dont 45 % fréquentent des établissements de langue anglaise. Il est temps que le gouvernement québécois exerce pleinement ses prérogatives en vertu de l’Entente Québec-Ottawa sur l’immigration.

C’est un début : le gouvernement Legault entend s’impliquer dans la sélection des immigrants temporaires qui, par la suite, sont admis de façon permanente. Il souhaite attirer davantage d’étudiants étrangers au Québec pour qu’ils décrochent un diplôme de cégep ou d’une de nos universités de langue française. Pour y arriver, il devra convaincre les autorités fédérales de cesser leurs pratiques discriminatoires qui empêchent des étudiants africains francophones, admis dans nos établissements d’enseignement supérieur, d’entrer au Québec.

Dans son discours, François Legault a aussi abordé la question des demandeurs d’asile qui entrent par le chemin Roxham. On en attend 50 000 d’ici la fin de l’année. Les services publics et les organismes communautaires sont submergés, tandis que les autorités fédérales prennent plus de deux ans pour traiter ces demandes irrégulières, sans parler des procédures d’appel. Le Québec est prêt à faire sa part, a dit le premier ministre. Mais il faut lui donner raison d’exiger qu’Ottawa mette fin à une situation qui ne peut durer éternellement. À voir le gouvernement Trudeau octroyer des contrats à des amis libéraux pour construire des résidences sommaires afin d’accueillir les demandeurs d’asile, on doit douter de son empressement.

On ne peut que constater « la forte attractivité de l’anglais », comme l’a rappelé le premier ministre, ce qui complique l’intégration en français des immigrants. En ce sens, le gouvernement Trudeau devrait s’engager à cesser de nuire. Ce serait la moindre des choses.

Source: La loi 96 ne suffira  pas

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

David: Au-delà du discours

2022/12/02 Leave a comment

Quebec commentary on PM Legault’s inaugural speech and focus on language and immigration (language worries based on mother tongue rather than more important language of work). And the realists in cabinet recognize that 100 percent francophone immigration will exclude some needed expertise and talent;

En 2018, le succès de Québec solidaire durant la campagne électorale avait fait soudainement découvrir à François Legault l’urgence de s’attaquer aux changements climatiques. Cette fois-ci, on a l’impression que le discours du Parti québécois sur le recul du français a provoqué le même genre d’illumination.

Le discours inaugural est rarement très excitant, à plus forte raison quand un gouvernement est reconduit dans ses fonctions après avoir fait campagne sur la continuité. Et à force de multiplier les priorités, on finit par donner l’impression de ne pas en avoir.

Le premier ministre a néanmoins senti la nécessité d’un rattrapage sur la question linguistique. D’entrée de jeu, il a évoqué le « destin improbable » des compagnons de Champlain, débarqués en terre d’Amérique il y a plus de quatre siècles, qui avaient « réussi à tenir », ce qui a imposé à leurs descendants l’obligation de continuer.

Son « premier devoir », a-t-il dit, est d’enrayer le déclin du français et même d’inverser la tendance. Il a reconnu du même coup que ce qui a été fait durant son premier mandat demeurait insuffisant, même s’il faut du temps avant que la loi 96 produise son plein effet.

Le ministre de la Langue française, Jean-François Roberge, avait mis la table 24 heures plus tôt. « Il va vraiment falloir que les Québécois comprennent qu’en ce moment, on ne marche pas, on court vers le mur ! On a un vrai problème. Le recul du français est plus important dans les 20 dernières années que dans le siècle précédent », avait-il déclaré.

Il n’y aura cependant pas de « réveil national », à moins que le gouvernement ne donne lui-même l’exemple. Certes, chacun doit agir, que ce soit dans le choix des produits culturels qu’il consomme ou encore en exigeant d’être servi en français, mais il revient aux élus de définir le cadre légal à l’intérieur duquel le combat pour la survie du seul état à majorité francophone en Amérique du Nord pourrait peut-être être encore gagné.

Si le français ne cesse de reculer comme langue de travail, le ministre peut-il sérieusement penser que la responsabilité revient aux francophones, qui ne sont pas suffisamment exigeants envers leurs employeurs ? Quand ils se présentent dans un hôpital de la région de Montréal où ils sont incapables d’être soignés en français, devraient-ils claquer la porte et aller ailleurs ?

S’il est possible d’exploiter un commerce ou de travailler dans un service public sans être en mesure de parler la langue de la majorité, ou même en refusant de le faire, c’est manifestement que rien ne l’empêche.

M. Legault exclut toujours d’étendre les dispositions de la loi 101 au niveau collégial, estimant que cela n’aurait pas d’effet majeur sur la francisation des immigrants. Il n’a jamais semblé comprendre qu’une politique linguistique est un tout dont chacun des éléments n’est pas nécessairement déterminant, mais dont la conjugaison permet d’arriver au résultat souhaité.

Le premier ministre dit maintenant miser sur une immigration à 100 % francophone ou presque, et il découvre maintenant que beaucoup pourraient être faits sans les nouveaux pouvoirs qu’il réclame au gouvernement fédéral depuis des années.

La nouvelle ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, a voulu calmer quelque peu l’emballement de son patron, qui a toujours eu du mal à maîtriser ce dossier, en disant qu’il fallait plutôt « tendre vers » cet objectif et que des immigrants simplement « francotropes », qu’ils aient pour langue maternelle l’arabe, le créole ou le swahili, pourraient faire l’affaire.

Le superministre de l’Économie, Pierre Fitzgibbon, s’est également empressé de mettre des bémols et réclame déjà des exceptions, notamment pour le développement de la filière des batteries, en attendant les autres projets qui ne manqueront pas de lui venir à l’esprit. « Ce serait l’fun d’avoir 100 %, mais il faut être réaliste et balancer ça avec les besoins », a-t-il expliqué.

M. Fitzgibbon pourra toujours rappeler au premier ministre que c’est exactement ce qu’il disait lui-même il n’y a pas si longtemps. En février 2019, M. Legault avait exprimé clairement sa vision des choses lors de la présentation du projet de loi 9 sur l’immigration. « Le PQ préfère dire : on va exiger le français avant l’arrivée. Moi, je pense que ça n’aiderait pas à bien répondre aux besoins du marché du travail », avait-il déclaré.

Il ne fait aucun doute que M. Legault aimerait que le Québec soit le plus français possible, mais sa priorité, pour ne pas dire son obsession, a toujours été d’abord de l’enrichir et de rattraper son retard par rapport à l’Ontario, thème sur lequel il est revenu à plus d’une reprise dans le discours inaugural. M. Fitzgibbon lui fera sans doute valoir qu’il est toujours hasardeux de courir deux lièvres à la fois.

Source: Au-delà du discours

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Immigration backlog leads to surge of legal cases against federal government

2022/12/01 Leave a comment

Yet another good analysis in the Globe, collateral damage from the government’s immigration policies and operational weaknesses that frustrate applicants and increase workload:

The federal government is facing a barrage of legal cases related to its backlog of immigration applications, which has led to slower processing times and plenty of frustration for those waiting years on a decision.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been named in 709 mandamus applications filed in federal court this fiscal year, which started in April, according to figures provided by IRCC as of Nov. 14. The filings are easily on pace to surpass the total for the previous fiscal year.

Mandamus is an order issued by a court to a lower court, or government entity, to carry out their duties. Thus, hundreds of people are seeking a judicial order that compels Immigration to finish processing their applications.

Mandamus cases are generally filed when there is an excessive delay in processing an immigration application and without a reasonable explanation provided by the federal government for that delay.

Ottawa is ramping up its intake of immigrants, which it says is crucial to fuelling economic growth and alleviating labour shortages. However, some of its moves to boost immigration have led to significant processing delays, affecting applicants that include skilled workers who are highly sought after by employers.

In search of resolutions, more people are turning to the courts. Slightly more than 800 mandamus applications against IRCC were filed in the 2021-22 fiscal year, an increase of 465 per cent from 143 applications in 2019-20.Glo

While lawyers told The Globe and Mail that mandamus is a last-resort option, it’s increasingly one that immigration applicants are advised to take, given their mounting frustrations over a sluggish and opaque system.

“It’s an effective remedy,” said Mario Bellissimo, founder and principal lawyer of Bellissimo Law Group. “However, it’s a remedy that really shouldn’t be used as frequently as it is, when the system is running the way it’s meant to run.”

The federal government is trying to process a stockpile of immigration applications. As of Oct. 31, there were about 2.2 million applications in IRCC’s inventories. Around 1.2 million were in backlog, meaning they’ve been in the system for longer than service standards for processing. Processing times vary by immigration stream. The mass of applications has fallen since September, but is still much larger than before the pandemic.

The federal government has blamed the buildup on office closings related to COVID-19, hindering its ability to process files efficiently. However, several economists and legal experts say that Ottawa had a large hand in creating the situation.

After failing to hit its immigration targets in 2020, owing to the pandemic, the federal government found various ways of encouraging more people to apply for permanent residency, and the subsequent increase in applications overwhelmed IRCC’s ability to process files in a timely manner.

This has led to a number of grievances. For instance, some high-skilled foreign workers in Canada are nearing the end of their work permits, but have yet to hear about their status. Others applied for their permanent-resident cards years ago, but are unable to find out why processing of their files has stalled.

That is forcing more people to seek legal action.

Out of the 809 mandamus applications that were filed against IRCC in the 2021-22 fiscal year, 333 came from those in economic streams of immigration. Another 183 came from the family class of immigrants. (Many of these are spousal cases, with a partner stuck overseas.)

The mandamus process can be expensive. Max Chaudhary, an immigration lawyer in the GTA, said it can cost roughly $6,000 to $15,000 for a single case, depending on how many stages are involved.

Kerry Molitor, an immigration consultant, is concerned that processing delays are creating a situation in which wealthier individuals are better positioned to force the government’s hand.

“It’s a solution that’s out of reach for most people,” she said.

Lev Abramovich, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, says his firm has filed more than 300 mandamus applications over the past year, which makes him one of the more prolific users of this legal option.

“We take an aggressive approach. We’ve also been successful with it,” he said. “Generally speaking, a mandamus application will wake IRCC up and will put pressure on them to finalize the pending application.”

The process starts with a demand for performance to IRCC, often in the form of a letter. In some cases, the federal government will start processing the file at this point.

If the case remains stalled, lawyers will proceed to file an application for mandamus in federal court. At this stage, the federal government will usually resume working on a file and issue a decision, several lawyers said.

In rare instances, however, cases will proceed to a hearing.

That is what happened to Siavash Bidgoly and his wife, Iranian nationals who moved to Toronto from the U.S. in July, 2018. That same month, Mr. Bidgoly submitted his application for permanent residency, having recently been invited to apply by the federal government. His wife was listed as an accompanying dependent.

Mr. Bidgoly expected an approval within six months, based on the experiences of some friends. Shortly after he arrived, he started a company, Tribe Technologies Inc., which employs about 50 people today.

Instead, the process dragged out for years. Mr. Bidgoly made several attempts to learn more about his application status, often hearing that his security check was still in progress.

Mr. Bidgoly filed a mandamus application in February, 2021. A federal court justice ruled in his favour in March, 2022, ordering IRCC to issue a decision within 90 days. Mr. Bidgoly and his wife were later approved for PR status.

“It is stressful. It is draining. I love Canada, but I questioned myself,” he said. “You are here because you trust their immigration system, and now this is what you get.”

In the hearing, IRCC argued that the delay was not excessive, in light of the pandemic’s effect on processing times. Justice Paul Favel did not find that argument satisfactory.

“Simple statements to the effect that a security check is in progress or that the pandemic is responsible for the delay are insufficient,” read the decision, adding that IRCC “had to provide evidence.”

Source: Immigration backlog leads to surge of legal cases against federal government

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Crawford: Size doesn’t matter? A small population may enhance Canada’s media — and its democracy

2022/12/01 Leave a comment

A new angle to me:

The federal government’s recent announcement that it would boost annual immigration to half a million people per year by 2025 coincides with conflicts over Ottawa’s Online News Act and the Competition Bureau’s blocking of a proposed mergerbetween telecommunications giants Shaw and Rogers. 

While these developments may appear to be unrelated, they aren’t. They raise questions about how Canada’s population growth might affect the changing media landscape and its ability to inform and underpin our democracy.

Few policy prescriptions have more transformative potential than the deceptively simple idea of doubling or tripling our population. 

An influential slice of elite opinion — represented by a non-profit group called the Century Initiative — was echoed in a 2017 report by the federal government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth and detailed in the book Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough by journalist Doug Saunders.

It urged Canadians to consider increasing our immigration rate by as much as 50 per cent and to aim at having a population of 100 million by the year 2100. This, we are told, will mean more economic growth, more innovation, more domestic autonomy and more international clout. 

But is bigger better for the truth? In particular, is it conducive to the kind of shared truths about basic facts and norms, spread through the media, that make meaningful discussions about public policy possible? 

‘Thin on the ground’

In Canada, Saunders argues those in Canadian media, publishing, the arts and broadcasting are the most acutely aware of the limitations of under-population. 

A dispersed population stretched across 10 provinces in six time zones means that “we have never had the size of audience to support the level of culture that befits a G7 nation … we are very thin on the ground as far as our ability to talk to ourselves.” 

A bigger Canada would have the economies of scale to facilitate “national conversation” and “our ability to talk to ourselves” — and that surely spells more and better democracy, right? 

Unfortunately, not if the American experience is any guide. 

The current media ecology in the United States has allowed extreme and false conspiracy theories to become normalized, with disturbing implications for the legitimacy of political and civic institutions. 

That’s because media silos are big enough to incubate people like Donald Trump, the Q-Anon movement and baseless voter fraud allegations without having their “truths” tested and effectively disproven in a common national forum. 

Operating in a larger country did little to save America’s newspaper industry, with its accumulated expertise and generally high standards of investigative reporting. The number of working journalists has been cut in half over the past 25 years. 

If anything, more resources and greater economies of scale on the internet and in think-tank networks have merely facilitated the growth of news and information silos.

They cater to what some citizen-consumers like to read (ideologically slanted analysis or partisan infotainment carefully micro-targeted to appeal to cognitive biases) or what powerful advertisers or devious hackers want them to read (news that is more congenial to foreign powers or economic elites) rather than what they need to read (quality, fact-based journalism). 

The enhanced ability to “talk to themselves” takes place in the proverbial echo chamber of as much as half of the country , plus countless smaller ones. That makes a truly national conversation more difficult to achieve, not less.

Public broadcasters

PBS and NPR offer a quality of national programming that is comparable to the CBC at its best, without regular commercial interruption. 

But they’re simply too small relative to the size of the marketplace to provide the influential standard-setting function that the CBC has historically provided for Canadian broadcast journalism or that public broadcasters have achieved for the United Kingdom, France, Australia and other nations. 

There are concerns about our cultural institutions’ dependence upon public subsidy, yet public funding has arguably enabled the CBC to serve as an authoritative national forum that has no equivalent in the United States.

How the question of scale might be intersecting with technology and public policy right now can be illustrated by the attempts to provide “alternative” news and sources of policy-relevant information and opinion here in Canada. 

Consider the failures of the Sun News Network to achieve its goal of becoming “Fox News North” or of its online successor, Rebel Media, to become Canada’s Breitbart News. 

The Sun News Network tried to get around the problem of a small market for its product by obtaining a basic cable licence across the country. The CRTC did not oblige them.

Rebel Media then suffered from its mistake of having a reporter provide favourable live coverage of the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that spun out of control, killing a counter-protester and injuring 19 others.

Larger markets aren’t always beneficial

Some progressive nationalists have been self-congratulatory about these setbacks, surmising that Canada’s political culture is essentially different from America’s in being less receptive to extreme right-wing politics. 

Yet supporters of the Sun TV model and Rebel Media can plausibly argue that all they really need to do in order to be more successful is to wait for an increase in the size of their potential audience. A more favourable political environment could also enable them to achieve a larger market share.

This serves to remind us why a larger domestic market for political news would not necessarily yield an improved public sphere. Social cohesion — and the encouragement of dialogue and debate in a good faith common effort to arrive at the truth — are public goods that require something more than demographic or economic growth to survive.

These qualities may even be easier to come by in a smaller Canada.

Paying closer attention to the dangers of growth, especially the modern threats to democracy posed by the internet, allows us to best plan for a brighter future — not just a bigger one.

Source: Size doesn’t matter? A small population may enhance Canada’s media — and its democracy

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