Ottawa improving vetting process to keep Heritage grants away from groups promoting hate: Hussen

2022/09/06 Leave a comment

Failure at the bureaucratic or political level, or both? Will the results of this review and the new vetting procedure be made public?

Housing, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen says the Department of Canadian Heritage will be improving its vetting process to make sure it doesn’t give money to organizations that espouse hatred — and those that do could be banned from future funding.

In an interview with CBC’s The House airing Saturday, Hussen said the federal government giving $133,000 to the Community Media Advocacy Centre to develop and run an anti-racism strategy for broadcasters indicated a failure of the vetting process.

In posts on social media, CMAC’s senior consultant Laith Marouf talked about “Jewish white supremacists,” referred to some Indigenous and Black individuals using the term “house slave” and spoke about francophones in Quebec using the slur “frogs.”

“The fact that this slipped through the cracks is a slap in the face to the Jewish community and the francophone community, and many other communities, and for that I sincerely apologize,” Hussen told host Catherine Cullen.

The Liberal government has cut funding to an outside group it hired to deliver anti-racism training after it was discovered that one of the group’s leaders made antisemitic remarks in social media posts.

“This incident reflects a failure in the vetting system that not only missed Marouf’s despicable language online but failed to reveal this information later on to correct the error.”

Hussen said department vetting processes will be strengthened and any organization found to have spread hateful views could be barred from receiving future funding.

Organizations would “not only have their [existing] funding cut, but they will be ineligible to receive any future federal dollars — they will be ineligible to apply to any programs from the Department of Canadian Heritage,” Hussen said.

He said no new federal money will be granted by Canadian Heritage until the new processes are in place.

Diversity and Inclusion Minister Ahmed Hussen talks about how the federal government ended up granting money to the Community Media Advocacy Centre and what he is doing to make sure similar mistakes can be avoided in the future.

Liberal MP criticizes initial response

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather flagged the comments to Hussen’s office in July and has said he was “disappointed” in the department’s response prior to the announcement that funding would be cut. Hussen said Saturday he quickly tasked his office with investigating and coming up with solutions, but now wishes the process had moved more quickly.

Prominent Jewish figures in the Liberal Party have been outspoken about the need for action on the funding. Former Liberal MP Michael Levitt, now president and CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said on Twitter he was “utterly disheartened” by the Marouf affair.

“Taking a stand against antisemitism should be a given and yet so few of my former Liberal colleagues have done so. This truly hurts. Jewish MPs shouldn’t be left to call this out alone,” he wrote.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said earlier this month the tweets showed a need for revamped oversight policies at Canadian Heritage.

The Canadian Press reported last month that a lawyer acting for Marouf asked for his client’s tweets to be quoted “verbatim” and distinguished between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists”‘ and Jews or Jewish people in general.

Marouf does not harbour “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” lawyer Stephen Ellis said in an email.

Source: Ottawa improving vetting process to keep Heritage grants away from groups promoting hate: Hussen

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Ibbitson: Will Trudeau’s Liberal government open the door to at-risk Uyghurs?

2022/09/06 Leave a comment

Should be an easy decision to make:

This autumn, the House of Commons will debate a motion from Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi calling on the federal government to accept 10,000 Uyghur refugees who have fled China but are at risk of being deported back, where they would face severe persecution.

That motion achieved greater urgency with the arrival of a United Nations report on Wednesday that states the Chinese government may be guilty of crimes against humanity in its treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities.

The question is whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals government will act to protect Uyghurs at risk. On Thursday, the government was sending mixed signals.

Mr. Zuberi put forward the motion, which calls on the federal government “to expedite the entry of 10,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in need of protection, over two years starting in 2024 into Canada.”

Motions, if passed, are not binding on the government, but they do represent the will of the House.

“Not only are you dealing with extremely vulnerable people, you are also dealing with the compounding issue of genocide,” Mr. Zuberi told me. “The UN report shows how immediate and concrete action on the part of governments is urgently needed.”

The report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights does not use the word “genocide.” But its findings are damning. “Serious human rights violations have been committed” in Xinjiang, concludes outgoing commissioner Michelle Bachelet, that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

These crimes include arbitrary detention, torture, forced medical treatment, sexual offences, forced birth control, forced labour, suppression of religious freedom and family separations.

“We’ve known about these crimes against humanity for quite a number of years,” said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, who is a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

“Now we have detailed documentation of the crimes, and official confirmation that all of this is happening.” She urged the federal government to swiftly launch a program that would bring government-sponsored Uyghurs into Canada. “I don’t believe they need to wait until 2024.”

But when the House unanimously declared last year that “a genocide is currently being carried out by the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” Mr. Trudeau and most of the cabinet stayed away from the vote. Marc Garneau, then foreign affairs minister, abstained, “on behalf of the government of Canada.”

The Trudeau government walks a fine line in its relations with Beijing. It banned the Chinese company Huawei Technologies from participating in the rollout of Canada’s 5G network, but that came long after allied countries made the same decision.

The government is planning new legislation to toughen the rules banning the import of goods produced through forced labour, but we lag behind other countries.

In that context, Thursday was typical. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly issued a strong statement of support for the UN report. “The release of this much-anticipated report was critical,” it said. “The findings reflect the credible accounts of grave human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang. This report makes an important contribution to the mounting evidence of serious, systemic human rights abuses and violations occurring in Xinjiang.”

However, a statement sent to me by Aiden Strickland, press secretary to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, was far more cautious. “The safety of Uyghur refugees is a high priority,” Ms. Strickland said. “However, we are not in a position to comment more specifically at this time as it could put this vulnerable population at risk.”

The statement made no mention of the UN report.

Few nations can match Canada’s record for swift action to rescue people at risk. More than 70,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Canada in the past six months; we brought in 25,000 Syrians displaced by civil war seven years ago; and while we have settled fewer than half of 40,000 Afghans at risk that we promised to bring in, at least the commitment is there.

Canada could easily absorb 10,000 Uyghur refugees. And we wouldn’t need to wait until 2024 to bring them here. We could do it right now, and we should.

Let’s hope the House strongly affirms Mr. Zuberi’s motion. Better yet, let’s hope the Trudeau comes to the help of Uyghurs, even if it does offend the regime in Beijing.

Source: Will Trudeau’s Liberal government open the door to at-risk Uyghurs?

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Fight for fewer words: Pierre Poilievre promises new law against government jargon

2022/09/06 Leave a comment

One of the few areas where I agree with Poilievre with respect to public facing information. Harder of course to do so in legislation and regulation.

One of the ironies is that when the previous government was writing the new citizenship guide Discover Canada in 2009, we argued for more plain language for the guide and related test but the political staffer responsible largely ignored our arguments (Discover Canada is written at a high school level, more sophisticated language than the formal CLB 4 requirement):

Pierre Poilievre is waging one of his final battles in the Conservative leadership race — one in which even his main rival is onside.

His latest target? The jargon used by the federal bureaucracy.

In a video posted to social media on Thursday, the apparent front-runner promises to enact a “Plain Language Law,” that he says would bring an end to government jargon, including in legislative documents.

Poilievre began his announcement by invoking the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the famous French author of “The Little Prince,” who once wrote a line about perfection.

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to subtract,” Poilievre said.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “our governments do nothing but add and add and add paperwork and forms and endless red tape.”

Poilievre said his new law would ensure government publications are instead written in simple, straightforward sentences,but he didn’t explain how such a law would work — or how the bill itself would be written without using jargon.

The law would also empower the auditor general to scan government publications for the presence of bureaucratese, he says, and provide Canadians with a government website where they can report any gibberish.

He said the law would also make it a job requirement for the government to hire writers that can write plainly and adapt bilingual language training for public servants to ensure they learn the most easy-to-understand words.

As for why it’s needed, Poilievre argues government documents, including forms, are needlessly complicated because the bureaucrats who write them use overly technical language, which creates hurdles for small businesses that have to read them.

All that time spent trying to understand what the documents say adds up, he says.

The federal government already has a policy about how its communications should sound, with rules stating its messages must be non-partisan and clear. The policy came into effect in 2016, early on in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tenure.

Poilievre’s announcement Thursday sparked a rare moment of agreement with Jean Charest, the former Quebec premier whom Poilievre has lambasted throughout the race for being out of touch with the current party.

In a short statement, Charest spokeswoman Laurence Tôth wrote: “We welcome this policy announcement.”

Poilievre’s fight for fewer words appears to be one he takes personally, as he complained about politicians’ use of jargon in a speech given more than a decade ago.

Back in 2009, when the prominent Tory only had five years of being a member of Parliament under his belt, he advised young conservatives on the value of learning to communicate as a way to advance their political careers.

Poilievre, who now boasts one of the largest social media followings in Canadian politics, complained then about how few people on Parliament Hill knew how to write and speak in a way that everyday Canadians could understand.

“It is not their responsibility to decipher excessively verbose language,” he said of voters.

Poilievre instructed his 2009 audience that the best way to learn to communicate plainly is to write for newspapers — which take complex ideas and use simple language to explain them to readers — and knock on doors.

Poilievre’s skill as a communicator is one of the reasons his supporters say they are backing him. His campaign says it sold more than 300,000 memberships and many Conservatives expect he will be elected the party’s next leader Sept.10.

Voting results will be announced that evening at a convention in Ottawa.

The party announced Thursday the event will feature a familiar face as a special guest speaker: Peter MacKay.

The former cabinet minister is an elder statesman in the movement, the party says, having led the erstwhile federal Progressive Conservative party into a merger with the Canadian Alliance in 2003, which birthed the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada.

MacKay decided against joining the leadership race this year, saying he was still paying down campaign debts from the 2020 leadership contest, which he lost to former leader Erin O’Toole.

Source: Fight for fewer words: Pierre Poilievre promises new law against government jargon

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Jamil Jivani sues Bell Media, alleging he was fired for not fitting ‘Black stereotype’

2022/09/06 Leave a comment

Interesting case to watch, given political dynamics at play (Jivani is the current President of The Canada Strong and Free Network, the former Manning Centre) and his lawyer is Kathryn Marshall, similarly on the right of the political spectrum.

Not sure how strong or effective case he has but as his lawyer tweeted, “I like a challenge” we shall see:

A former talk show host is suing Bell Media Inc. claiming he was fired as the media conglomerate’s only full-time Black talk radio host because his views didn’t match a stereotype the company expected from a Black man.

Jamil Jivani was dropped from the airwaves of Bell’s iHeartRadio network and fired in January. He claims it became clear he was hired as tokenism and fired as wokeism.

“There was an expectation that because he’s Black he should have been saying and doing certain things — because in Bell’s mind he was checking this token box, and when they realized they weren’t getting the kind of Black man they wanted, that’s when he was out the door,” said Jivani’s lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, a partner at Levitt Sheikh.

“They really wanted him to espouse a certain liberal worldview they thought he should be espousing as a member of the Black community.”

Jivani filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming breach of contract and wrongful dismissal.

The company denies the allegations.

“Bell Media does not comment on matters before the court. However, we can confirm that we will be defending ourselves against these false claims,” a Bell Media spokesperson told National Post.

Jivani, 34, of Oshawa, Ont., is a lawyer and author known for conservative views. He is a regular contributing columnist for Postmedia, including National Post.

His daily show on Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and other stations in the Bell radio network launched at the start of Black History Month in 2021, amid racial protest over the police killing of George Floyd. His show highlighted his experience and connections in the Black community.

“As news stories around Black Lives Matter and other racial issues faded from the news, Bell no longer had the same use for a Black employee. Tensions increased from Bell management when the Plaintiff would share his perspectives, views and beliefs,” he alleges in his statement of claim.

“It became clear that Bell had a rigid but unspoken vision for how Black people should fit into the company. Bell wanted the Plaintiff to be a token beholden to the company’s identity politics,” he alleges.

Jivani first appeared on Bell radio shows as a periodic guest before he hosted a show focusing on Black Lives Matter, on a trial basis in 2020, and as a fill-in host that same summer, his statement of claim says.

The next year he became full-time staff with a daily 7 to 10 p.m. show on Newstalk 1010 and several stations in Bell’s network.

“His first guests included the first Black Attorney General, Kaycee Madu, and the first Black championship CFL coach, Michael Pinball Clemons,” his statement of claim says.

“The plaintiff was excited to join one of Canada’s largest media companies and to share his views and perspectives, not just as a member of the Black community, but as a free-thinker and activist. Bell was excited to have the plaintiff on its programming, as he was a member of a racialized community and it was beneficial to them for both optics and content.

“Little did the Plaintiff know, Bell expected the Plaintiff to espouse only certain kinds of views — ones that fit a stereotype that Bell thought a member of the Black community should conform to,” he claims.

Jivani’s lawsuit alleges he was pressured by management to record a radio segment denouncing Canada as a racist country in the lead up to Canada Day. He declined.

“Bell was disappointed by his refusal to espouse a specific set of social and political views, and the company was disappointed that he did not fit the mold of a Black stereotype that they had expected him to,” his claim says.

He said his show included diverse voices including academics, authors, comedians, journalists, and athletes, including Toronto Raptors basketball star Fred VanVleet. Several guests were Black conservative commentators.

In late 2021, a manager told him there had been “complaints and concerns” about his show’s “divisive and contrarian topics,” his claim says. A note from a manager read: “I want to be sure we are reflecting the company’s strong commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, and that we are building passion in our audience and growing our ratings.”

A meeting was scheduled for the new year. When the meeting arrived, however, the agenda seemed to have shrunk.

He was told he was terminated as part of organizational changes; the manager then hung up, leaving him on the call with a human resources consultant, he claims.

Marshall called it “outrageous” that white media executives used diversity as a wedge to fire their only Black radio host.

ani’s claim seeks compensation of $42,500, the amount he was expecting to be paid over six months, additional damages of $500,000, and a declaration Bell Media breached its duty of good faith and honesty.

Bell Media calls itself “Canada’s leading content creation company” and “Canada’s largest radio broadcaster.” The company owns CTV and more than two dozen speciality TV channels.

The company’s personnel decisions have made headlines recently over its sudden and secret firing of Lisa LaFlamme, the CTV news anchor, which was greeted with anger and dismay.

LaFlamme’s messy termination prompted a wave of complaints from inside and outside the company and sparked international condemnation of perceived sexism and ageism. Her decision to allow her hair to grow out grey during the pandemic prior to her firing seized public attention.

In June, Danielle Graham, the former host of CTV’s flagship entertainment show, eTalk, sued Bell Media.

Graham claimed she was fired in retaliation for challenging gender discrimination against women at the company where she was skipped over for promotion, paid less, given fewer perks but more requests for free work than male colleagues.

Source: Jamil Jivani sues Bell Media, alleging he was fired for not fitting ‘Black stereotype’

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ICYMI: Yakabuski: Can Canada handle its coming population boom?

2022/09/06 Leave a comment

Valid question. Alternative question: Is the coming population boom good for Canada and Canadians?

The latest projections from Statistics Canada show that Canada’s population is poised to grow much faster over the next two decades than the federal agency forecast just three years ago, suggesting any downturn in the country’s housing market is likely to be short-lived.

Indeed, the revised Statscan figures released last week underscore the need for policy makers to clear the way for more housing and infrastructure projects now to accommodate a fast-growing national population that is projected to increase by around 10 million people by 2043.

Statscan normally updates its population projections every five years. But the agency undertook a “necessary” revision of its 2019 projections this year “to reflect recent developments in Canadian demographics,” including the pandemic and Ottawa’s move to increase immigration targets. While the longer-term impact of the pandemic on population growth is expected to be “rather imperceptible,” the opposite is true for the higher immigration levels.

In February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced plans to boost immigration levels “to help the Canadian economy recover and to fuel post-pandemic growth,” following a sharp drop in the number of newcomers arriving in Canada in 2020. Immigration rebounded in 2021, with a record 405,332 new permanent residents arriving here. And Canada is set to welcome about 432,000 new permanent residents this year, 447,000 in 2023 and 451,000 in 2024.

National Bank of Canada economists Matthieu Arseneau and Alexandra Ducharme noted that Canada’s population will increase by one million more people by 2032 than Statscan previously projected. Almost all of that extra growth will occur among those aged between 25 and 54 years old – an age cohort that is “crucial to the resilience of consumption and real estate.”

Royal Bank of Canada economists Robert Hogue and Carrie Freestone came to a similar conclusion even before the release of Statscan’s updated population projections. In a mid-August report, they projected that Canada will count 730,000 more households by 2024 than it had in 2021, as the country welcomes more than 1.3 million new immigrants.

“This surge, combined with shrinking household sizes, will strengthen demand for housing (whether owned or rented) and act as a powerful counter to sliding sales and prices – eventually putting a floor under the correction,” they wrote.

The updated Statscan projections highlight the urgency for policy makers to plan for what is expected to be the highest population growth among the Group of Seven countries over the next two decades and beyond. Based on the federal agency’s medium-growth scenario, Canada’s population is projected to grow to 47.8 million in 2043 from 38.2 million in 2021.

Ontario is expected to add more than four million new residents over the next 20 years, with its population rising to 19 million from 14.8 million. Canada’s most populous province will see its share of the national population increase to 39.8 per cent from 38.8 per cent.

Even so, Ontario’s 28-per-cent population growth over the next two decades is expected to pale compared with a 46-per-cent surge in Alberta, which will see its population grow to 6.5 million by 2043 from 4.4 million. Albertans will account for about 13.5 per cent of Canada’s population in 2043, up from 11.6 per cent in 2021.

However, Quebec’s share of the Canada’s population is set to fall below 20 per cent for the first time, as the province (which chooses its own economic immigrants) accepts proportionally fewer newcomers than the rest of the country. From 22.5 per cent of Canada’s population in 2021, Quebec will see its share decline to 19.8 per cent by 2043. Quebec’s overall population will grow by less than 10 per cent over the same period, to 9.4 million.

The Atlantic provinces will benefit from interprovincial migration levels that will be higher than those forecast before the pandemic, but not enough to reverse a decline in the region’s share of the national population. Newfoundland and Labrador’s population will shrink outright.

Ottawa’s higher immigration targets will on their own not be enough to ease the country’s labour shortage, as more and more Canadians retire in coming years. Even more aggressive immigration levels would be needed to reverse the aging trend that will see the share of the population over 65 increase steadily over the next two decades to 23.1 per cent in 2043 from 18.5 per cent in 2021.

The average age of Canadians, which increased from 27.3 years in 1921 to 41.7 years in 2021, will rise further to 44.1 years by 2043. And while about 871,000 were over 85 in 2021, their ranks will swell to more than 2.2 million by 2043.

Still, Canada’s population projections tell a rather enviable story compared with many European countries, where population aging is occurring at a much faster rate amid lower immigration levels. The question is whether policy makers here can move fast enough to prepare the country for its coming population boom.

Source: Can Canada handle its coming population boom?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Trudeau promises complete review of funding to anti-racism group after ‘vile’ tweets

2022/09/01 Leave a comment

Needed. Will be interesting to see how comprehensive the review will be and the degree to which the  the findings will be public and candid:

The federal government is conducting a “complete review” of funding to an anti-racism group whose senior consultant sent a series of tweets about “Jewish white supremacists,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.

The government has put a stop to all funding to the Community Media Advocacy Centre and is putting in place procedures “to make sure this never happens again,” he said at a press conference.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that federal dollars have gone to this organization that has demonstrated xenophobia, racism and antisemitism.”

Last week, Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen, who was also at the press conference, cut $133,000 in government funding to the Community Media Advocacy Centre and suspended an anti-racism project it was overseeing after “reprehensible and vile” tweets posted by its senior consultant, Laith Marouf, came to light.

Trudeau’s comments come as other past funding for the organization is scrutinized.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said this week that he wants money provided to CMAC under the Canada Summer Jobs program in 2018 to be clawed back.

He said a grant application by CMAC for $2,882 under the program, which offers work experience to people aged 15-30 and is run by Employment and Social Development Canada, was reviewed at the time by his constituency office in Ville-Marie, Que.

CMAC was approved to receive that amount, but ultimately only got $795, according to a spokesman for Marci Ien, the minister for women, gender equality and youth, who publicly launched the program this year.

“Not a single cent of government money should go to organizations that harbour anti-Semitic views,” Miller said on Twitter. He said he has never met Marouf, whose views he called “despicable.”

A spokeswoman for Miller’s federal department said “clearly, this organization should not receive additional funding.”

“After funding had been allocated, Laith Marouf made antisemitic comments that are reprehensible and inconsistent with the objectives of the Canada Summer Jobs program,” Miller’s office added.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, the CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said his organization appreciates Miller’s “clear and unambiguous statement regarding the importance of government funding not going to groups harbouring and espousing antisemitic views.”

“We call on the ministries involved to be transparent and provide details about their investigations into the systemic failures that led to this inappropriate funding in a timely fashion,” he added.

Opposition MPs are calling for a full audit of funding to CMAC from government departments and through federal programs, including for its involvement in proceedings run by Canada’s federal broadcasting regulator.

CMAC describes itself on its website as a non-profit organization supporting the “self-determination of Indigenous, racialized and disabled peoples in the media through research, relationship-building, advocacy and learning.”

The Twitter account for Marouf, a consultant for the organization, is private. But a screenshot posted online shows a number of tweets with his photo and name.

One tweet said: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of (their) Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.”

Stephen Ellis, a lawyer for Marouf, distinguished between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists”‘ and Jews or Jewish people in general.

Marouf does not harbour “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” Ellis said in an email.

“While not the most artfully expressed, the tweets reflect a frustration with the reality of Israeli apartheid and a Canadian government which collaborates with it,” Ellis said.

Public records show that CMAC has received about $500,000 in funding since 2016 to act as a public interest group in proceedings run by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

The money came from the Broadcast Participation Fund, an independent body that was stood up by the CRTC to pay for public interest groups’ participation in CRTC matters.

In 2021, CMAC also took part in CRTC consultations on regulations amending the accessibility reporting requirements for broadcasters and telecommunications companies.

According to publicly available documents detailing payments, Marouf and his wife, Gretchen King, whose name also appears on CMAC company filings, were both paid for taking part in the proceedings.

They were paid using money from a deferral account held by Bell, which the company agreed to have the CRTC distribute to public interest groups on its behalf. Bell declined a request for comment.

CMAC did not respond to requests for comment.

But Ellis, Marouf’s lawyer, said the centre’s work had been valuable and contributed greatly to the proceedings.

The lawyer said what “is very clear from CMAC’s filing and the CRTC decision is that if it were not for CMAC’s efforts, Indigenous, racialized and women disabilities groups would have been absent from the proceedings to rewrite CRTC policies to comply with the Accessible Canada Act and its clauses reaffirming the intersectionality of oppressions.”

Peter Julian, the NDP heritage critic, is calling for Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez and CRTC officials to appear at the House of Commons heritage committee when Parliament returns to discuss an apparent lack of “due diligence” before paying CMAC.

“It is obvious there was no vetting at all, and that raises a bunch of disturbing questions,” he said.

John Nater, the Conservative critic for Canadian heritage, also said the minister should answer questions before the committee. “We believe it imperative that the minister provide answers at committee and explain how this was allowed to happen.”

Fellow Tory MP Melissa Lantsman said she will present a petition from her constituents to the House of Commons asking for a public inquiry. She said an independent body should examine all historical funding to CMAC.

She criticized Rodriguez for not speaking out about the tweets. “The most vile thing about this is the silence,” she said.

Rodriguez declined to comment.

Tory MP Dan Albas, who sits on the Commons finance committee, said the government needs to examine all funding of CMAC.

“There has been radio silence over what they are going to do to get to the bottom of it,” he said.

Source: Trudeau promises complete review of funding to anti-racism group after ‘vile’ tweets

Canadian Jewish community expectations:

“What I know is that the minister now has all the information, appreciated the challenge it poses, and has publicly committed to a series of remedies. We will judge him on what flows from that commitment over the coming days.”

During a press conference on Aug. 29, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino (Eglinton—Lawrence, Ont.) announced that the Heritage Department will conduct an extensive review of the funding being distributed through Ottawa’s anti-racism strategy to ensure no additional funds are directed to organizations or individuals who promote hateful content.

Fogel said the review will need to determine what deficiencies in the department’s decision-making process led to a grant being awarded to the CMAC. He added that CIJA will judge Hussen and the Liberal government based on the outcome of that review.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, says his organization will be satisfied if Housing and Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen’s ‘actions support his undertaking and commitment’ regarding the CMAC funding scandal. Photograph courtesy of the CIJA

“If, over the coming days, [Hussen’s] actions support his undertaking and commitment, I think we would be quite satisfied with his management of the issue. But there are many moving pieces,” said Fogel in the email.

On Aug. 23, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Que.) told the National Post thathe alerted Hussen about Marouf’s anti-Semitic social media posts before the issue was reported on widely, and argued action could have been taken more quickly.

Fogel suggested that an appearance by Hussen before the House Heritage Committee would provide a valuable opportunity to address the issues in an open and accountable way.

“There are many dimensions of the issue regarding which there is conflicting information, including when the minister became aware of the problem and what steps were taken to address it,” wrote Fogel. “I cannot speak to the timeline regarding when [Hussen] was first made aware of this specific issue. However, there are many possible explanations for the absence of visible action for a number of weeks. He may have referred it to the department. He may have required legal advice, since a legal contract had to be considered.”

Fogel said the federal government’s response to this funding scandal must include full disclosure about how the grant was awarded to CMAC, and a new protocol regarding future grants that shows the government “has translated its learning into a better way forward.”

“The goal should be not just the identification of where the process went wrong—and in this case, it went very wrong—but more importantly, what generic procedures should be put into place that will ensure such things do not happen in the future,” said Fogel in the email.

The Hill Times reached out to Hussen to ask about Housefather’s claim that swifter action could have been taken in regards to suspending the CMAC funding. A spokesperson for the minister responded that anti-Semitism, hate, and racism in all its forms have no place in Canada, and that Hussen’s office is leaving no stone unturned in this matter.

“We thank MP Housefather for bringing this individual to our attention, as our government does not tolerate this hatred, and we have informed CMAC that their funding was cut and their project was suspended,” read the emailed statement. “We have also instructed the department of Canadian Heritage to identify how CMAC was able to access funding in the first place, and to look for immediate solutions when it comes to properly vetting funding applicants, including any individuals they employ or partner with. Minister Hussen is working with his colleagues to ensure that programs that are both within and outside of his purview are assessed with strong processes, in order to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”

The Hill Times contacted Canadian Heritage to ask about the vetting process in awarding government grants for organizations, and about how the process might be refined going forward, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, Ont.), who is Jewish, told The Hill Times that the funding scandal is indicative of a systemic issue.

“Anti-racism in this government doesn’t seem to include anti-Semistism,” said Lantsman. “There is a trust issue now here.”

Lantsman said that she favours a full review of Heritage, the vetting process behind awarding grants, and the timeline of when Hussen was made aware of Marouf’s social media posts.

“There’s a culpability of the government trying to take what they think is quick, corrective action to sweep this under the rug while not addressing the actual problem,” said Lantsman. “I want to be clear. The government has not addressed this as a wider issue, [other] than to cut funding after more than a month after they’ve been caught.”

NDP MP Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, Ont.), his party’s ethics critic and a member of the Parliamentary Black Caucus, told The Hill Times it would be strange for anyone to pin the blame for the funding scandal specifically onto Hussen, given the decision was made before Hussen assumed responsibility for the diversity portfolio that falls within the Department of Heritage. Hussen was sworn in as minister of housing and diversity on Oct. 26, 2021.

Green said it is the Liberal government’s responsibility to “take meaningful action beyond individual people.”

“What I’m looking for out of this government is not about individual actors within the government, but an actual commitment that they’re going to follow through on the outcomes around anti-racism,” said Green. “This goes well beyond Minister Hussen, who, in the right moments, has said the right things, and I think has supported the right initiatives.”

Green said he supports a review of Heritage Canada, and any government department that deals with “the procurement of outside organizations who may be engaged in harmful behaviours.”

“What we have found within the Liberal government [is] that they speak the language of equity, diversity and inclusion, but it’s often the case that they fail to have the corresponding outcomes in their actual governing, and that is certainly not constricted to Minister Hussen,” said Green. “I think it speaks to the culture of the seriousness of the issue. My hope is that [the Liberals] would hold a high standard of scrutiny and due diligence on funding for all agencies, in all departments, that are government funded … and learn from this situation, and move forward.”

Source: Diversity Minister Hussen will be judged based on result of review into CMAC funding, says Jewish advocacy group

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Clerk Report to PM 2022 – Service Delivery Language [more candour required]

2022/09/01 Leave a comment

Like all government reports (save audits and evaluations), the Clerk report focuses on successes, not failures. Certainly, COVID financial support and vaccine procurement are right to be highlighted as overall successes, as are ongoing efforts to increase diversity and representation, as highlighted in the report and data tables.

But its characterization of how the government responded to Afghan refugees following the Taliban takeover presents a far more positive picture than warranted, to be diplomatic.

But looking ahead, curious to see how the recent failures of government service delivery (i.e., passports and immigration) will be treated in the 2023 report, given this 2022 commitment:

Deliver results for Canadians.

We have clearly shown the Public Service’s ability to step up and overcome every obstacle to get things done and deliver real results for Canadians. We have proven what we can do during times of crisis and we have learned much from this. But this has also disrupted our usual lines of work. Now, we must apply what we have learned to how we approach everything —from delivering core programs and services to responding to unexpected challenges. We must build on our enhanced capacity to deliver digitally while holding true to the importance of providing in-person support, to ensure every Canadian gets the service and results they need in a timely manner. Public servants should feel empowered to ask how things could be done better, and they should be supported in taking thoughtful risks in how we implement to achieve results for Canadians. The lessons we learned from the pandemic will help us get there.

Certainly, some honesty regarding the public service service delivery failings will be needed for the 2023 report’s (and Clerk’s) credibility.

To be mischievous, I redrafted this paragraph for the 2023 report to encourage drafters of next year’s report to be more candid regarding areas where the government had significant policy and program failures (“challenges” in bureaucratese):

Deliver results for Canadians – Lessons learned from program failures

We have clearly shown the Public Service’s (in) ability to step up and overcome every obstacle to get things done and (fail to) deliver real results for Canadians. We have proven what we can do during times of crisis (and what we cannot do) and we have learned much from this (particularly from failures in passport and immigration service delivery). But this has also disrupted our usual lines of work. Now, we must apply what we have learned (from successes and failures) to how we approach everything —from delivering core programs and services to responding to unexpected challenges. We must renew focus on service delivery in order to restore trust. We must build on our enhanced capacity to deliver digitally, including real time status updates and greater transparency, while holding true to the importance of providing in-person support (including reducing waiting times and lines), to ensure every Canadian gets the service and results they need in a timely manner. Public servants should feel empowered to ask how things could be done better (without penalty), and they should be supported in taking thoughtful (to be defined) risks in how we implement to achieve results for Canadians. The lessons we learned from the pandemic (service failures) will help us get there.

Source: 29th Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada

Filed under Government, Immigration, Passports Tagged with , ,

Airport, passport and immigration problems ‘should never have happened,’ minister admits

2022/08/31 Leave a comment

Refreshing admission by Minister Miller (he consistently one of the few ministers who is more candid with respect to government weaknesses and failures). And yes, the task force is more communications than substance as the main issues involve Service Canada and IRCC, which did not need a task force to address. (Airport issues are more complex given the different players involved):

The delays plaguing Canada’s airports, passport services and immigration processes “should never have happened in the first place,” the federal minister charged with co-leading Ottawa’s task force on slashing wait times admitted Monday.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller, providing an update on the government’s efforts to tackle pandemic-induced delays across a swath of operations and services, said that despite some improvements, officials were still working to prevent such issues from occurring again.

“I do want to say that nobody should be congratulating themselves for having done their jobs. We are by no stretch of the imagination out of the woods yet. The focus will continue to be on Canadians and the results they expect and deserve from this or any other government,” Miller said at a joint news conference with other ministers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a committee involving 13 cabinet members in late June to get started on reducing wait times at major airports and clear out backlogs that led to sluggish processing times for passport and immigration applications.

As COVID-19 restrictions eased, air passengers passing through Canadian travel hubs have contended with hours-long delays in security screening lines, delayed or cancelled flights, hiccups with the ArriveCAN app and the chaos of lost baggage.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said Monday that between January and August, the number of air travellers jumped by more than 250 per cent just as the travel industry faced staffing shortages.

He pointed to the hiring of more than 1,800 new screening officers and weekly meetings with airlines, airports and travel-related government departments as evidence that delays were improving. According to the federal government, between Aug. 18 and Aug. 21, 85 per cent of passengers were screened within 15 minutes. The number of aircraft held at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport also dropped to 47 by the third week of August, down from 370 in May.

Monette Pasher, the interim president of the Canadian Airports Council, said there has been “marked progress” in reducing wait times and cancellations in the past few weeks.

But she told the Star in a statement that other measures, like modernizing screening procedures and reopening Nexus assessment centres amid a backlog of applications for the trusted traveller program, would improve the situation more.

The staffing increases don’t change the fact that airport screeners are “worn out,” said Catherine Cosgrove, the director of communications and public affairs for Teamsters Canada, which represents over 1,000 screeners across the country.

“We can expect to continue seeing difficulties in hiring and retaining screeners and delays throughout the fall,” she told the Star, adding that there still aren’t enough trainers to get new hires working at full capacity.

Addressing frustrations experienced by Canadians trying to renew or apply for passports, Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould acknowledged “the recent demand for passports far exceeded the government’s expectations.”

That was despite unions representing federal workers warning the government in 2021 that passport requests would rise, without the necessary staffing to take on the increased load.

Gould said Ottawa has boosted the number of staff handling the country’s passport program and that workers have implemented a “triage system” to better process applications. Passport services have also been expanded in a number of offices and Service Canada centres.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser also discussed application backlogs within his department, which have left international students and others hoping to immigrate to Canada in limbo.

“Though we have a welcoming nature towards newcomers, our immigration system has faced unprecedented challenges and obstacles that have become larger and have compounded on one another over the past few years,” Fraser said.

He said that owing in part to staffing changes, his department had returned to a “pre-pandemic service standard” in some areas and was on track to reaching its permanent residency and study permit goals.

“We could have sat here and blamed others. We could have blamed airlines, we could blame this, that and the other. But we realized quite quickly that a lot of responsibility did lie on our shoulders,” Miller told reporters.

“To some extent, we were slow in responding to a number of unprecedented … things that Canadians expect to see from their governments.”

Indeed, ministers said Monday that Ottawa has been “scrambling” to contend with a series of challenges outside its control, from the havoc the pandemic wrought on Canada’s travel sector to continuous humanitarian crises that hampered which immigration applications were prioritized.

“We’ve thrown bodies at the problem, which is not the most effective way of doing things. It’s important because it got people their passports in time so they could finally travel after sitting in their houses for two years,” Miller said. “That is not the most effective way … of doing things.”

Source: Airport, passport and immigration problems ‘should never have happened,’ minister admits

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Immigration Minister says his department has shifted focus to international student visas as many await last-minute approval

2022/08/31 Leave a comment

Yet the latest example of management weaknesses at IRCC as it appears to lurch from one program backlog to another. The risk is, of course, that the shift in resources to address student visas will adversely impact other programs, leading to future negative headlines:

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser says his department has shifted its focus toward tackling backlogs in student visa applications, as many students who have been accepted to attend Canadian universities and colleges this semester wait nervously for their immigration approvals.

The minister made the comments Monday as part of the first news conference by the task force to improve government services. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the team of cabinet ministers in June when the federal government was facing heavy public criticism for failing to provide basic services, such as timely passport delivery or efficient traveller processing at Canadian airports.

Mr. Fraser said his department recently shifted its focus away from work permits to tackle the demand for student visas.

“We had been focusing over the course of the summer on processing as many work permits as possible to help address the labour shortage. We’ve made a pivot, and through the month of August, we expect that we’re going to process a little more than 104,000 additional study permits,” he said. “There has been an absolute explosion in demand when it comes to Canada’s International Student Program in recent years.”

The student visa delays recently prompted a complaint from the Indian High Commission in Ottawa. India is the largest source country for international postsecondary students.

In addition to Mr. Fraser’s update, Monday’s news conference included assurances from Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould that passport wait times had improved and an update from Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, who said delays and cancelled flights have been dramatically reduced.

Opposition MPs said the task force is little more than a public relations exercise. They also say some of the improvements in areas such as passports and travel delays can be attributed to the fact that the summer travel season is coming to an end.

As for the Immigration Minister’s comments about student visas, Conservative and NDP MPs said this is part of a continuing pattern of shifting focus from one crisis to another, which they say ultimately creates bigger problems for the system as a whole.

Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan said the students awaiting visas are expecting to start classes shortly.

“There are many students that are still left in limbo in this immigration backlog,” he said. As for the task force, he said many of the members are the same ministers who are ultimately responsible for the service issues.

“This task force really hasn’t shown or done anything yet,” he said.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan said Canada’s immigration system, including student visa applications, is in a state of chaos. She said operating in a constant state of “crisis management mode” is not sustainable.

Ms. Kwan said there should be independent reviews of the key departments to determine why services are failing.

“The task force was established as a political cover-up,” she said.

International students from outside Canada pay tuition that is often more than two or three times higher than those paid by domestic students.

Naman Gupta, a 22-year-old student in New Delhi, India, was planning to attend York University this fall to pursue a postgraduate certificate.

His study permit has not come through and he said unless something changes in a matter of days, he’ll defer coming to Canada until the start of the January term. However the $17,000 in tuition he paid won’t be returned in the meantime, he said.

“It’s going to be tough. All my plans are held up,” Mr. Gupta said. “I’m pretty stressed.”

He said he expected the visa processing would have been expedited to ensure that students could arrive in time for the start of their courses.

“I would’ve appreciated if they could apply more compassion to the situation,” Mr. Gupta said. “The response is slow.”

Pallavi Dang, who lives in New Delhi, applied for her study permit in March. She’s disappointed that more than five months later she still hasn’t heard whether she will be approved. Department guidelines said respondents can normally expect an answer in eight weeks, and that current average processing times are about 12 weeks.

She said she had made plans to hand over her business while she was away, but now she’ll need to change course.

“All that planning is on hold,” Ms. Dang said. “I’m not able to take another step.”

Paul Davidson, president of Universities Canada, an umbrella group that lobbies on behalf of nearly 100 Canadian universities, said Canada trails countries such as Britain and Australia in visa processing.

He said there has to be more federal government investment in IT capacity to speed up processing.

“I think that’s really the solution,” Mr. Davidson said. “There’s all-party support for international students, there’s a good policy climate, but it’s the operational reality that needs to improve.”

Source: Immigration Minister says his department has shifted focus to international student visas as many await last-minute approval

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Harris: The future of malicious artificial intelligence applications is here

2022/08/31 Leave a comment

More on some of the more fundamental risks of AI:

The year is 2016. Under close scrutiny by CCTV cameras, 400 contractors are working around the clock in a Russian state-owned facility. Many are experts in American culture, tasked with writing posts and memes on Western social media to influence the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. The multimillion dollar operation would reach 120 million people through Facebook alone. 

Six years later, the impact of this Russian info op is still being felt. The techniques it pioneered continue to be used against democracies around the world, as Russia’s “troll factory” — the Russian internet Research Agency — continues to fuel online radicalization and extremism. Thanks in no small part to their efforts, our world has become hyper-polar, increasingly divided into parallel realities by cherry-picked facts, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories.

But if making sense of reality seems like a challenge today, it will be all but impossible tomorrow. For the past two years, a quiet revolution has been brewing in AI — and despite some positive consequences, it’s also poised to hand authoritarian regimes unprecedented new ways to spread misinformation across the globe at an almost inconceivable scale.

In 2020, AI researchers created a text generation system called GPT-3. GPT-3 can produce text that’s indistinguishable from human writing — including viral articles, tweets, and other social media posts. GPT-3 was one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of AI: it offered a simple recipe that AI researchers could follow to radically accelerate AI progress, and build much more capable, humanlike systems. 

But it also opened a Pandora’s box of malicious AI applications. 

Text-generating AIs — or “language models” — can now be used to massively augment online influence campaigns. They can craft complex and compelling arguments, and be leveraged to create automated bot armies and convincing fake news articles. 

This isn’t a distant future concern: it’s happening already. As early as 2020, Chinese efforts to interfere with Taiwan’s national election involved “the instant distribution of artificial-intelligence-generated fake news to social media platforms.”

But the 2020 AI breakthrough is now being harnessed for more than just text. New image-generation systems, able to create photorealistic pictures based on any text prompt, have become reality this year for the first time. As AI-generated content becomes better and cheaper, the posts, pictures, and videos we consume in our social media feeds will increasingly reflect the massively amplified interests of tech-savvy actors.

And malicious applications of AI go far beyond social media manipulation. Language models can already write better phishing emails than humans, and have code-writing capabilities that outperform human competitive programmers. AI that can write code can also write malware, and many AI researchers see language models as harbingers of an era of self-mutating AI-powered malicious software that could blindside the world. Other recent breakthroughs have significant implications for weaponized drone control and even bioweapon design.

Needed: a coherent plan

Policy and governance usually follow crises, rather than anticipate them. And that makes sense: the future is uncertain, and most imagined risks fail to materialize. We can’t invest resources in solving every hypothetical problem.

But exceptions have always been made for problems which, if left unaddressed, could have catastrophic effects. Nuclear technology, biotechnology, and climate change are all examples. Risk from advanced AI represents another such challenge. Like biological and nuclear risk, it calls for a co-ordinated, whole-of-government response.

Public safety agencies should establish AI observatories that produce unclassified reporting on publicly available information about AI capabilities and risks, and begin studying how to frame AI through a counterproliferation lens. 

Given the pivotal role played by semiconductors and advanced processors in the development of what are effectively new AI weapons, we should be tightening export control measures for hardware or resources that feed into the semiconductor supply chains of countries like China and Russia. 

Our defence and security agencies could follow the lead of the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence, whose Defence AI Strategy involves tracking and mitigating extreme and catastrophic risks from advanced AI.

AI has entered an era of remarkable, rapidly accelerating capabilities. Navigating the transition to a world with advanced AI will require that we take seriously possibilities that would have seemed like science fiction until very recently. We’ve got a lot to rethink, and now is the time to get started.

Source: The future of malicious artificial intelligence applications is here

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