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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B.C. plans to streamline licensing for internationally trained nurses

2023/01/11 Leave a comment

Of note:

British Columbia has announced new supports to help hire and train more nurses and midwives in order to take pressure off the strained health-care system.

Premier David Eby said the new measures will support Canadian-trained nurses who want to get back into the workforce, as well as internationally trained nurses looking to practise in B.C.

“There are highly skilled and experienced nurses who want to get to work in our system now but are facing barriers preventing them from delivering services that British Columbians need,” Eby said during a news conference at Langara College in Vancouver on Monday.

Source: B.C. plans to streamline licensing for internationally trained nurses

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Order of Canada appointees far less diverse than the population, analysis shows

2023/01/11 Leave a comment

Based on my analysis posted earlier. Comments from Sarah Kaplan and Erin Tolley decrying the lack of diversity without fully recognizing as legitimate the focus of the Order on longer term contributions rather than new and emerging talent for many arts and culture awards (the Governor General Performing Arts Awards are for lifetime contributions).

Personally, I don’t find it “completely unacceptable” that the Order doesn’t provide “full representation” given its longer term focus, nor do I find its “elite” focus unacceptable. By definition, the Order is the elite Canadian award, just as the Nobel is the world elite award, whereas others are not.

That being said, there are opportunities to encourage more nominations for women and visible minorities, learning from the efforts to increase business and Prairie representation through additional funding for promotion in 2015 under the Conservative government which had, however, limited success.

The 2022 list of appointees to the Order of Canada is far less diverse than the Canadian population and even less diverse than it was in 2021, a new analysis shows.

The Governor General made 184 appointments to the order in 2022. It’s considered one of the country’s highest civilian honours, one which recognizes “people who make extraordinary contributions to the nation,” according to Rideau Hall. Over 7,600 Canadians have joined the order’s ranks since its creation in 1967.

But analysis by retired public servant Andrew Griffith, who served as Canada’s director general of citizenship and multiculturalism, found that last year’s appointees were not representative of the Canadian population.

Order of Canada must change, professor says

Source: Order of Canada appointees far less diverse than the population, analysis shows

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Here’s why Vancouver’s first baby of 2023 won’t be in Canada for long [birth tourism]

2023/01/10 Leave a comment

Classic birth tourism example. The couple came to Canada because “we chose Canada because the Canadian passport is better.” They couple had enough money to travel to Canada and pay the non-resident fees but now given complications and the deteriorating economic situation in Egypt are encountering financial hardships (unlike more wealthy women who come to Canada to give birth and can afford birth tourism residences).

The other point of note is the naiveté of the couple in being so frank about their reasons for coming to Vancouver, and it is rare to have those coming for birth tourism to be interviewed and quoted. The reporter lack of awareness of the citizenship aspects and related issues is also of note:

Baby girl Hana Amr Fouad was born at 2:54 a.m. on January 1, 2023, in Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital, weighing in at nine pounds 1.5 ounces. But circumstances surrounding her birth are not typical of a new year’s baby.

Parents Salma Gasser and Amr Fouad flew to Vancouver from Cairo, Egypt “to give the baby this opportunity,” says her father.

They carefully considered the place of Hana’s birth and secured visas for both the U.S. and Canada but ultimately, “we chose Canada because the Canadian passport is better,” explains Fouad. However, things haven’t quite gone to plan.

For starters, baby Hana was over a week late.

Gasser, whose brother lives in Vancouver, arrived in Canada two months ago and Fouad arrived just under a month ago. This is the pair’s first time in Canada.

Hana’s due date was Dec. 17 and the couple pre-paid for a natural birth but in the end, Gasser needed a C-section.

Mother and baby are resting at home with the midwife but the delay and changed birth plan have caused complications for the family.

Fouad says that since arriving in Canada, Egypt has imposed strict limits on credit cards and the value of the Egyptian pound has been steadily depreciating, both of which are putting unanticipated financial strain on the couple. The hospital bill for a C-section is also higher than for a natural birth so the couple is facing an unexpectedly higher cost for Hana’s birth. 

“We are still trying to figure it out,” says Fouad.

The family is anxiously awaiting the birth certificate for baby Hana – which can take up to six weeks to be issued – and then plan to secure a Canadian passport for their daughter. They will be returning home to Egypt but have plans of coming back to B.C. in the future.

“We hear Vancouver is much nicer in the summer,” he says.

Source: Here’s why Vancouver’s first baby of 2023 won’t be in Canada for long

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