MacDougall: The attention economy is now a serious threat to Western nations

2025/08/09 Leave a comment

Fully agree but no easy solutions but Royal Commission or equivalent would be good starting point. Social media is the equivalent of soma in Brave New World in its ability to distract but with the dangers of polarization and fake information:

…The mass harvesting of human attention for the profit of a few wealthy platforms is socially corrosive. It must end. Canada must launch a Royal Commission to explore the full scale and scope of the threat posed by the attention economy.

The complexity of the issues raised by the mass harvesting of human attention deserve a systematic examination in a forum free from outside influence. How do the attention economy’s opaque algorithms work? How do these platforms impact our mental health? How do they target girls, and is this different for how they target boys? How do our foreign adversaries exploit the attention economy to undermine democratic processes, which the recent Hogue Inquiry into foreign interference partially addressed?

What is the impact of the resulting loss of accountable local journalism on the lower levels of government? More fundamentally, what do Canadians understand about data and advertising-based business models — whether for social media or search — and their consent to such use of their personal information?

Canadians deserve as neutral a reading on these subjects as is possible, and a Royal Commission is the best route to achieving it.

Source: MacDougall: The attention economy is now a serious threat to Western nations

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Nicolas: Morale et Caisse de dépôt

2025/08/09 Leave a comment

Uncomfortable comparison with sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s:

…La vérité — et on le voit depuis l’annonce faite par la France, le Royaume-Uni, le Canada et maintenant d’autres nations d’une reconnaissance prochaine de l’État palestinien —, c’est que les mesures même « symboliques », prises dans des pays clés, accroissent une pression diplomatique plus qu’urgente, encore plus dans un contexte de famine.

C’est la Coalition du Québec Urgence Palestine qui organise principalement la mobilisation pour mettre de la pression sur La Caisse et qui a publié la lettre ouverte qui a forcé la réponse — rhétoriquement très faible — de son p.-d.g. La Coalition inclut des syndicats, dont la CSN, Québec solidaire, le Parti vert du Québec, la Ligue des droits et libertés, plusieurs organismes de coopération internationale, des regroupements de femmes, des groupes communautaires.

Plusieurs de ces groupes ont une longue histoire. Plusieurs se faisaient déjà traiter de noms d’oiseaux pour leur engagement contre l’apartheid, dans les années 1980. C’est que la moralité des institutions canadiennes, lorsqu’elle existe, se construit sur la persistance de gens tenaces, qui ne lâchent rien. Je vous laisse faire les parallèles qui s’imposent.

Source: Chronique | Morale et Caisse de dépôt

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Lederman: What the Israeli flag debacle at Auschwitz really says about this moment

2025/08/09 Leave a comment

Good observation:

…Mr. Bartyzel did not answer my question about whether this has happened before. Have unauthorized Israeli flags entered the site previously by people marching in? Has anyone been forced to return their flags to their vehicles and then enter without them? Has such an order been given before Israel became the global pariah it is now? If so, I missed the global outrage.

Today, the Jewish community is on high alert, frightened that antisemitism is lurking around every corner. Here in Canada, B’nai Brith reports that antisemitism has reached “perilous, record-setting heights.” The same thing is happening in the U.S., the U.K., around the world. 

In the midst of this, it is easy for Jews to assume antisemitic intent. While this is often true, it is not always the case. We need to be thoughtful in each circumstance. 

That said, if there is a spot where the consequences of antisemitism can be felt viscerally, it is at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the absolute worst happened.

I visited the site in 1998 during the March of the Living, with family members including my mother, who survived Birkenau. It was a difficult day for her, but she drew comfort from not just her own descendants, but from seeing so many young Jews from around the world – and the sea of Israeli flags. They were a symbol of what rose from all she had lost: her parents, her little brother, her home, every single possession, her freedom, her youth, her education, her health, her life as she had known it.

Nobody should have to experience such staggering losses. Nobody.

Source: What the Israeli flag debacle at Auschwitz really says about this moment

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Plus de 142 000 personnes attendent leur résidence permanente au Québec

2025/08/09 Leave a comment

Of note:

…Est-il déjà arrivé que l’on résorbe ces arriérés ? En 2019, le ministre Simon Jolin-Barrette avait éliminé 18 000 dossiers d’immigration, avant de se faire ordonner par la Cour supérieure d’en reprendre l’examen. Ces dossiers étaient cependant non traités et non pas sélectionnés comme c’est le cas actuellement avec les 142 500 personnes en attente.

Laurence Trempe rappelle aussi que Jason Kenney, ministre de la Citoyenneté et de l’Immigration entre 2008 et 2013, avait aussi supprimé certains dossiers de grands-parents qui attendaient des parrainages depuis plus de huit ans. Mais la différence encore ici est que ces personnes n’étaient pas installées au Canada, contrairement aux plus gros arriérés actuels en immigration humanitaire.

L’accélération pourrait venir d’un programme d’exception, si Québec décidait par exemple de traiter ces dossiers hors quota, ou alors d’Ottawa, dit Me Lapointe, même s’il en doute. L’ancien ministre de l’Immigration Marc Miller avait d’ailleurs laissé entendre qu’il était prêt à dépasser le seuil de Québec pour le regroupement familial.

L’AQAADI plaide qu’il n’y a rien dans l’Accord Canada-Québec qui l’empêcherait de le faire. « Notre interprétation est que Québec n’a pas la compétence pour limiter dans ces catégories. On doit tout au plus en tenir

Source: Plus de 142 000 personnes attendent leur résidence permanente au Québec

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Yakabuski: Montreal Pride finally stands up to the pro-Palestinian bullies 

2025/08/08 2 Comments

Of note:

…The statement did not name any banned groups, but Ga’ava and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) revealed that they had been suddenly disinvited from the event. In a Facebook post, Ga’ava said the explanation given by Fierté Montréal for its exclusion was related to Ga’ava’s description of certain groups that had previously demanded the organization’s banishment from the parade. Ga’ava’s and CIJA officials had said the groups were “pro-terror” and “pro-Hamas” in a Jewish newspaper article. Ga’ava president Carlos Godoy denied those terms constituted hate speech.

On Tuesday, Fierté Montréal reversed itself and lifted the ban on Ga’ava and the CIJA. It apologized to the Jewish community, and particularly Jewish members of Quebec’s LGBTQ community, who felt it had sought to exclude them. What exactly transpired remains unclear, but it is a safe bet that government and corporate sponsors – which account for about 80 per cent of Fierté Montréal’s budget – had something to do with the move. The chairman of Fierté Montréal’s board of directors also resigned on Monday. 

Fierté Montréal’s reversal angered the pro-Palestinian groups that had called for Ga’ava’s exclusion. But it was the correct move. There are legitimate grievances to be aired about the Israeli army’s increasingly disgraceful conduct in Gaza. Yet, attacking Ga’ava appears to have more to do with the role such groups play in underscoring Israel’s protection of LGBTQ rights, in contrast to the oppression LGBTQ persons face in most Arab jurisdictions. That is not a contrast pro-Palestinian activists want to emphasize, perhaps because it exposes their own cognitive dissonance, if not hypocrisy.

These pro-Palestinian LGBTQ activists accuse Israel of “pinkwashing,” or playing up gay rights in Israel to distract attention from its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. But what they are really seeking to do is to silence anyone who suggests otherwise.

Source: Montreal Pride finally stands up to the pro-Palestinian bullies

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How do Canadian officials detect plagiarized refugee claims?

2025/08/08 Leave a comment

Reasonable use of AI IMO:

A failed refugee claimant came to Amandeep Singh in May for help after he was refused because his claim was “nearly word for word” identical to others before the refugee board.

While the Edmonton-based immigration consultant had heard for a long time that some claimants and their counsel have plagiarized claims to game the system, what struck him was what tool the refugee board and immigration officials use to flag these cases, which he says seems to have happened more often.

“I wouldn’t say this (plagiarism) is something new,” said Singh, who did not take on that client because he didn’t believe the man had a case. “It shows to me that officials are actually using artificial intelligence, so it is easier for them to look at multiple cases at the same time to see if the information in a claim matches with other asylum applications.”

While the refugee board denies the use of AI in its claim processing, the Immigration Department and the border agency — bodies that determine if a foreign national is eligible to seek asylum in Canada and which can intervene in refugee hearings — are less clear on how they identify these cases. Generally, officials deem similar claims as a potential indicator of fraud.

In the case that Singh reviewed with personal information redacted, the refugee board adjudicator drew comparisons between the man’s claim and five others.

“I am a follower of the Sikh religion, and my family and I are devout Sikhs … 1became (sic) the member of Khalistan movement (aiming for a peaceful creation of an independent state for Sikh people),” according to the refugee refusal decision, which set out a side-by-side table highlighting each similar paragraph in those claims. The parentheses are from the claim, which includes grammatical errors, as cited in the decision.

“The primary objective for joining movement was to establish a new nation for the Sikh community, providing them the freedom to practice their religious activities and ensuring equal rights for all.”

Apart from the different date noting when the claimant joined the movement, the whole paragraph, including the typo “1,” was the same as the narrative cited by the refugee protection tribunal. The claims also referred to visits by Indian authorities to the family homes to look for the claimant and for alleged links to Pakistan.

The person told the tribunal that he did not know why others’ narratives were similar to his word for word, but did explain that what happened to him could have happened to all Sikhs given the circumstances. The refugee judge, however, concluded that’s not reasonable.

Sean Rehaag, director of Refugee Law Laboratory at Osgoode Hall Law School, said there are anti-plagiarism tools that universities have used for a long time to find similar bits of text, as well as ways for the refugee board to identify similar claims without using high-tech.

For instance, said Rehaag, a decision-maker may encounter two or more similar claims, and refer to the board administration to look into it further, examining other files from the same country by the same representative. Or decision-makers may talk with one another about a particular type of case, or someone triaging cases discovers a pattern and flags it internally.

Rehaag said the information could also come from immigration and border agency officials, who he said probably have program integrity tools that would allow them to identify suspicious patterns. In those circumstances, he said, officials would then intervene in the refugee proceedings based on integrity concerns.

The Immigration and Refugee Board told the Star that it does not use artificial intelligence at any stage of processing or deciding claims.

“While claims from the same country or region may share common elements, credibility or integrity issues could be raised if review of the files identified substantially similar claimants’ narratives about the specific circumstances of their claim,” the board said in an email.

Where similarities are identified in the process, it said claimants are required to provide an explanation. If the claimant is found to have provided false or misleading evidence, it could lead to a rejection….

Source: How do Canadian officials detect plagiarized refugee claims?

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Hayden Taylor: What happens if you don’t have Indigenous actors for a play about Indigenous people? It doesn’t get produced

2025/08/08 Leave a comment

Ironic and sad collateral damage:

…Thus, the conundrum. Obviously it would be pretty nice for my play to be produced. After all, Daddy needs a new pair of shoes … or, in my case, moccasins. In today’s world, hiring a non-native isn’t even considered. So the whole potential production has to suffer, being thrown out with the theatre water.

For me, the play is a loving tip of the hat to our elders, showing their perspective on the world and presenting a vision of the First Nations community that is seldom seen. I consider it a warm and humorous play about elder love in a fish-out-of-water context. This, I believe, explains the interest in the play. The characters are native but they don’t have to be. The story and characters are easily relatable by all people.

Crees in the Caribbean has been produced a few times already, but alas, the reservoir of Indigenous actors is quite low, especially ones who might be interested in doing theatre. The artistic director of the cancelled production told me that she contacted some of the more well-known television actors with little luck, and in one case, an agent actually laughed at her when she pitched her proposal. The budgets of theatre run shallow while television/movie resources run substantially deeper.

My real fear is that this could set a bad precedent. Do not write any First Nation characters older than, for the sake of argument, 55. Unless you know many out-of-work television actors. Or the theatre company has a makeup department skilled in aging people. But nobody wants that. Again, all part of the conundrum. 

The scariest possibility is that, at 63, I may have to start acting to fill this vacancy. And nobody wants that! 

Source: What happens if you don’t have Indigenous actors for a play about Indigenous people? It doesn’t get produced

Filed under Aboriginal Tagged with ,

USA: New Immigration Service Director May Pursue An Anti-Immigration Agenda

2025/08/08 Leave a comment

Incorrect title – not “may” but “will:”

The new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will likely focus the agency on the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda. On July 15, 2025, Joseph Edlow began as USCIS director following a Senate confirmation vote along party lines. Edlow’s job will be to implement the policies of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The agenda will include restricting asylum, directing adjudicators to tighten the approval process for immigration benefits applications and ending or controlling the ability of international students to work in the United States after graduating from U.S. universities.

USCIS Will Be An Immigration Enforcement Agency

In an opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation, Joseph Edlow said, “USCIS must be an immigration enforcement agency.” That sends a message to adjudicators: Treat applications similarly to those during Donald Trump’s first term, when denials increased and Requests for Evidence skyrocketed at USCIS.

In a question submitted to Edlow, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the committee’s ranking member, wrote, “The Homeland Security Act does not include language stating that USCIS is an immigration enforcement agency. . . . The statute makes clear that unlike ICE and Customs and Border Protection, USCIS’s primary mission is adjudication and processing of applications, not enforcement. Will you retract your inaccurate statement that ‘USCIS must be an immigration enforcement agency?’” Edlow replied in writing, “No. The statement was not inaccurate as the adjudication of immigration benefits is inherently an act of enforcement of the immigration laws.”

Jon Wasden of Wasden Law said the USCIS transition from a “service” to an “enforcement” agency began under Barack Obama and intensified during Donald Trump’s first term. He notes that even during the Biden administration, USCIS continued to take funds and reallocate them to the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate within USCIS, which he believes violates the Homeland Security Act. Wasden is harsh in his assessment: “Both parties have created an environment where applicants are seen as the enemy, treated as criminals, and officers are above the law. I wish I could lay all this at the feet of Stephen Miller, but his Democrat predecessors share the blame.”

Still, USCIS differed significantly under Joe Biden compared to Trump’s first term. The Biden administration’s final rule on H-1B visas proved to be far more favorable for employers, universities and high-skilled foreign nationals than anything produced during the Trump years. Policy experts viewed the Trump administration’s interim final rule on H-1B visas, which a court blocked for violating the Administrative Procedure Act, as designed to prevent, or at least discourage, employers from using the H-1B category by narrowing eligibility and piling on requirements. A Department of Labor interim final rule would have priced many H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants out of the U.S. labor market by inflating the required salaries.

“Positive actions the Biden administration took on high-skilled immigration included taking steps to issue an ‘unprecedented’ number of employment-based green cards, increasing the validity of Employment Authorization Documents for up to five years, providing favorable guidance for O-1A visas and national interest waivers and making it easier for some employment-based green card applicants to stay if they have ‘compelling circumstances,” according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. “O-1A visa filings and requests for national interest waivers increased significantly after the new guidance.”

The NFAP analysis noted that the Trump administration carried out what judges found to be unlawful policies on H-1B visas for nearly four years. An H-1B is often the only practical way for a high-skilled foreign national, including an international student, to work long term in the United States. Denial rates for H-1B petitions for initial employment reached 24% in FY 2018 and 21% in FY 2019, compared to 6% in FY 2015. (H-1B petitions for “initial” employment are primarily for new employment, typically a case that would count against the H-1B annual limit.) Only lawsuits, court rulings and a legal settlement ended the policies.

Source: New Immigration Service Director May Pursue An Anti-Immigration Agenda

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McLaughlin: This DOGE Won’t Hunt: A Canada-U.S. Comparison

2025/08/08 Leave a comment

Good analysis and recommendations on how to curb government expenditures:

“DOGE is not for Canada. Here’s why:

  • First, a DOGE-style, top-down process can only exist in presidential forms of government like America’s not parliamentary forms of government like Canada’s. Despite his ‘First Buddy’ status at the time, even the limited cabinet-style meetings Trump held with Elon Musk in the room degenerated into tense public disputes between Musk and cabinet secretaries.⁸ It must have been worse behind the scenes with shoving altercations being reported.⁹ Prime ministers strive to avoid that spectacle at all costs. It is the surest way to lose authority both with the public and within the government and caucus. [How many British prime ministers were there exactly in 2022?] DOGE would be a skin graft that would and should be be rejected by our system of governance. 
  • Second, DOGE was rushed and forced. It did not take into account vital missions or mandates of governing agencies. Witness the subsequent rehires to ensure key health or safety activities continued. It tried to squeeze in too much in too short a timeframe. Chaos resulted.
  • Third, DOGE evaded the law. DOGE-inspired lawsuits have made the process and results anything but orderly or complete. Judges have stayed some decisions requiring complete rehires of staff while others have proceeded. The result is a legal quagmire of confusion.
  • Fourth, it was talent-agnostic. It took little to no account, as far as can be seen, in retaining top-tier talent. It was ‘billboard budgeting’, announcing big across-the-board cuts in both funding and personnel without thinking through expertise or performance. Probationary hires, for example, were the first to go because they were the least protected by civil service rules and could account for early ‘wins’. But real skepticism exists as to whether it actually produced results.¹⁰
  • Fifth, it was run by a big personality and a bunch of tech nerds with no actual government experience and with no realistic, definable goals. At first, Musk said it would cut $2 trillion from the $7 trillion federal budget. Then, it became $1 trillion. Finally, he said DOGE would save $150 billion. In truth, the biggest cuts Elon made were to his own ambitions. Here’s what they say they have saved (as of time of this post). As you can see, the definition of “savings” is an elastic mouthful:

What Should Canada’s Approach Be Instead?

Here’s my list:

  1. Don’t try to do it all at once. Do it over time. A judicious application of time-limited hiring freezes for some public service classifications and employee attrition will get the headcount down. 
  2. Apply across-the-board cuts to get some results early, show seriousness, and secure political buy-in internally and externally that this is fair and not aimed at any one constituency. But don’t rely on these alone.
  3. Get out of actual program areas by making real choices about what is the role of the federal government in certain areas. Shrink government’s cost by shrinking government’s footprint.
  4. Resist starting up new boutique initiatives for headlines and stakeholders. They cost money and require more public servants.
  5. Combine public service reductions with deliberate productivity enhancements through AI and digital technologies.
  6. Conduct a root-and-branch customer service delivery assessment of programs to find efficiencies now. Ask these two questions: 1. What is the unit cost of delivering a particular service? 2. How many people, across how many departments, touch a service delivery or operational decision by the government?
  7. Bear in mind that new, different skill sets are needed in the public service and some hiring must still occur to enhance its overall performance.
  8. Set measurable goals for success that are both financial (balancing the operational budget, a stated government priority), and non-financial (better citizen service delivery results, improved labour productivity, etc).
  9. Create a process to do this that can be sustained between and over budget cycles, so it leads to a permanent reduction in the public service headcount. 
  10. Finally, hold ministers and deputy ministers accountable – politically for the former and financially for the latter – for results. That should get their attention!

Here endeth the lesson!“

Source: This DOGE Won’t Hunt: A Canada-U.S. Comparison

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Khan: We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to assaults on Muslim women 

2025/08/07 Leave a comment

Agree:

…The scourge of hate is corrosive. It cannot be effectively addressed in a siloed fashion, where each affected group stands alone. Here’s an idea: next time when there’s a hateful incident against one group, let’s have a few representatives of all affected groups stand together to condemn the hate. There are fundamental disagreements between affected groups, but all agree that no member of our Canadian family should be subject to intimidation, threats or violence.

Source: We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to assaults on Muslim women

Filed under Antisemitism, Hate crimes, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with

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