While the understandable focus is with respect to those of Indian descent holding leadership and senior positions, there is a larger group of workers in such industries as agriculture and trucking. From a political perspective, the outsized influence of Sikh and other Indo-Canadians reflects their geographic concentration: 47 ridings in Canada have 10 percent or more South Asian residents (2016 Census).
India is on the rise across the United States and Canada — in education, high-tech and politics.
The CEOs of five of the most powerful high-tech companies in North America have origins in India. They’re heading Microsoft, Google, IBM, Twitter and Match Group (which owns Tinder).And people of Indian ancestry are punching above their weight in politics in the U.S. and Canada. “There may well be an Indian-American president before there is an American Indian one,” says The Economist.
The educational achievements of people of Indian origin are above the norm in North America. And their are among the strongest of any ethnic group in the U.S. and Canada. This is not to mention one study showing people of Indian origin are almost four times more likely to own a home than the average Canadian.
India is the second highest source country for immigrants to the U.S., where 4.6 million have Indian origins, or 1.4 per cent of the total. They are mostly from southern India and tend to live in the U.S. South and East.
In Canada, India is the No. 1 source country for immigrants by far, accounting for 30 per cent of all newcomers since 2016.
There are 1.4 million people with Indian roots in Canada, most of whom are immigrants. They make up four per cent of the population. Generally from Northern India, most live in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
Even though many are already flying high in U.S. high-tech, the impact of people of Indian background on Canadian business, especially, is growing sharply.
The influence of Indo North Americans is destined to expand further. Let’s look at why.
The tech sectors in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are expanding on the strength of a workforce where two of five are foreign born. And U.S. immigration rules designed to protect homegrown workers means our southern neighbour is losing thousands of Indian high-tech experts and others to Canada.
With the U.S. restricting its coveted H-1B working visa (including with a rule that no one country can be the source of more than seven per cent of recipients), many computer specialists are among the more than 217,000 people from Indian who can work in Canada as foreign students (they make up 30 per cent of all international students).
Canada also accepted 128,000 people from India last year as new immigrants, many of them programmers. And it’s on track for a similar number in 2022. That compares to just 39,000 immigrants from India in 2015, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were first elected.
Such business success is made possible in large part because educational levels soar among those of Indian descent.
In the U.S. three of four of adults of Indian background have bachelors degrees or better, according to Pew Research. That’s the highest of any Asian immigrant group, with Chinese Americans coming in at 57 per cent. The overall bachelor’s degree average in the U.S. is 38 per cent.
In Canada, educational achievement is also pronounced. A recent Statistics Canada study by Theresa Qiu and Grant Schellenberg found 50 per cent of South Asian-Canadians (mostly from India) had bachelors degrees or more. The portion rose to 62 per cent among South Asian women.
The portion of bachelors degrees among Canadians with origins in South Asia is much higher than the 24 per cent for white men and 38 per cent for white women, as well as the 17 per cent for Latin American men and 28 per cent for Latin American women. One of the few ethnic groups scoring higher than South Asians are Chinese Canadians.
And wages reflect education levels. The median household income in the U.S. of Indian households is by far the highest of any ethnic-Asian group, at US$119,000, according to Pew.
The typical Chinese American household brings in US$82,000. The median household income across the U.S. is US$67,000.
While U.S. figures on housing are not readily available, a consumer survey by Vivintel, based in Toronto, found that South Asians, a solid majority of whom are from India, are almost four times more likely to buy a homethan the average Canadian.
“Home ownership is very important to South Asians … because they’re told by their parents that renting is just throwing away your money,” says Rahul Sethi, a 38-year-old director of Vivintel who immigrated to Canada from India with his family.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the rise of Indians in North America is their oversized affect on politics.And it’s not just because of U.S. vice-president Kamala Harris, who went to an English-language high school in Montreal after her scientist mother from India, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, got a job researching breast cancer at McGill University.
Even though Harris is a front-runner as a future Democrat presidential nominee, she’s far from alone in U.S. halls of power.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, who surveys Asian American attitudes from the University of California, maintains Indo Americans are far likelier than other immigrant groups to get involved in politics as donors, voters and candidates. They tend to favour Democrats by a margin of three to one.
Ram Villivalam, a state senator in Illinois, says having Harris running to be president gives confidence to Indo Americans. Pramala Jayapal, the first woman of South Asian descent to preside over the Congress, is now one of four influential Indo American politicians, dubbed the Samosa Caucus, in the House.
A similar movement is happening in Canadian politics.
The Indo Canadian population, like the Indo American, leans liberal-left. More than 38 per cent of respondents to a 2021 YouGov poll would cast a vote for the Liberals — twice the number that planned to go with the Conservatives.
One in five backed the left-wing New Democratic Party, the country’s third largest party, which has been lead for five years by Indo Canadian Jagmeet Singh.
More than 12 per cent of cabinet ministers in the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are Indo Canadian, including Harjit Sajjan and Anita Anand. At least 14 Liberal MPs are Indo Canadian.
This impact list goes on in politics, as well as in business and education. Indo North Americans are on a roll.
SFU professor Darren Byler has been frequently attacked by China’s state media, which accuses him of being an agent of the U.S. government. Something he denies.
During four groundbreaking expeditions into China, the latest in 2018, Byler has witnessed many colleagues and research subjects disappear into the mass “re-education” camps and forced labour factories endured by more than 1.5 million Uyghur Muslims.
The author of In the Camps: Life in China’s High-Tech Penal Colony, was interviewed during a downtown Vancouver conference about the clampdown in Xinjiang. It was attended by 60 people, including Uyghur Canadians, international students from China, Muslim academics and activists.
Participants at the Simon Fraser University event required Postmedia’s commitment to protect their identities, so their families would not be harassed or threatened by police in China. There are about 400 ethnic Uyghurs in Metro Vancouver, the largest group of any Canadian city.
China’s authoritarian leaders are engaged in a planetary campaign to challenge and intimidate anyone who points to the incarceration, mass surveillance and draconian clampdown of the Uyghurs, which the Canadian government has called a “genocide.”
The Global Times, a tabloid newspaper arm of the Chinese Communist Party, has accused Byler of being an “anti-China figure” who makes “fabricated” allegations about “genocide and crimes against humanity” in the Xinjiang region of western China, which is inhabited by about 11 million Uyghur Muslims. The professor is sure China’s agents have attended his classes.
Byler has been with Uyghur people on the streets of China when police have stopped them, taken their mobile phones and demanded, “What is the password for your phone?” A specialist in high-tech surveillance, he says China uses 9,000 police surveillance hubs to routinely search personal data for evidence of resistance and what they consider a dangerous commitment to Islam.
Facial recognition technology is widely used in Xinjiang. Byler has first-hand knowledge of Uyghur students who have studied in North America being detained in China after omnipresent cameras found them walking outside their confinement. Families are often broken up when a Uyghur whom authorities deem suspicious is sent to a work camp, many of which produce textile goods for the West. The U.S. and Canada have laws banning such goods, but many argue they’re ineffective.
A prolific author and widely cited scholar, Byler, 40, is among the Western researchers who argue that China’s Han ethnic majority has in the past decade been escalating a colonialistic internal effort to smear the Uyghur people and systematically erase their Indigenous culture and faith. Chinese authorities often label the Uyghurs as “separatists” and “terrorists,” as well as lazy and slow.
One frequent tactic of the state-controlled Global Times is to try to silence Canadian criticism of the treatment of Uyghurs by condemning this country’s residential-school system for Indigenous children, which the federal government began in 1881 and for the most part ended by the 1970s.
This month, The Global Times enthusiastically reported on Pope Francisrecently referring to Canada’s attempt to assimilate First Nations through residential schools as “a genocide,” even while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has referred to it as “cultural genocide.”
The Global Times article cited how Canada’s Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls also called it a “genocide,” while reporting that last year “more than 1,100 unmarked graves have been discovered at former residential school sites.” Canadian media outlets now largely refer to them as “suspected” graves.
The Global Times and China’s diplomats are making a clear attempt to claim, “You in the West have no right to criticize us, because look what you did to Indigenous people,” Byler said. “They’re kind of saying, ‘You did it. So we are doing it, too.’”
While Byler believes Canada’s residential-school system was a colonialistic attempt at assimilation, he notes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has formalized a decades-long process of restitution in Canada, unlike in Australia and the U.S. And definitely unlike 21st-century China.
During the several years that Byler, a German American who is now a permanent resident of Canada, has spent living among Uyghur people in Xinjiang, he came to realize how outward-looking and sophisticated they were before China accelerated efforts to wipe out their culture.
One of many of his research papers that is drawing global attention explores how Uyghurs had been keenly taking courses from 2004 to 2014 in the English language, with students developing a special interest in novels about totalitarianism, like Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell.
Han Chinese prejudices often portray Uyghurs as “backward,” so the language students especially devoured books about Black Americans like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama. The paper, co-written with an unnamed Stanford professor, reveals the Uyghur valued learning about a society in which members of a minority could hold power.
But the English-language schools were shut, and teachers Byler knew were detained, after a 2014 visit by President Xi Jinping.
Even though most attendees at the SFU conference demanded anonymity, Byler introduced one local Uyghur who was willing to be interviewed because he has already gone public as an activist. Now a high-school science teacher in Surrey, Kabir Qurban came to Canada with his family from Afghanistan as a refugee.
Since he has become a high-profile activist in Canada, including with his own websites, Qurban said that sometimes he has attended Uyghur events, such as weddings, where attendees have asked that he not sit at the same table with them.
In this era of facial recognition technology, the Uyghur Canadians fear Chinese authorities could catch them together in a photo with the staunch critic of China. That could easily lead to a brother, sister, mother or father back in Xinjiang getting harassed by police. Or worse.
“It’s unfortunate,” Qurban said, “but I have to respect their stance.”
Of note. My concerns regarding productivity implications cited:
Canadian employers are moving to fill more jobs with temporary foreign workers, as they face a sustained labour shortage and the lowest unemployment rate in decades.
In the first three months of 2022, employers received approval from the federal government to fill about 44,200 positions through the TFW program, according to a Globe analysis of figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). That was the most in at least five years, and 73 per cent higher than the quarterly average from 2017 to 2021.
As usual, farms were the biggest source of labour demand. Nearly half of the approvals in the first quarter were for general farm workers. Jealous Fruits Ltd., a large cherry producer in Kelowna, B.C., was authorized to fill roughly 640 roles, the most of any employer.
The restaurant industry is turning more to foreign labour as well. The second most in-demand workers in the quarter were cooks, at 2,100 positions, almost double the previous quarter. Companies were also permitted to hire nearly 1,700 food-service supervisors, who often work for franchisees of fast-food chains, such as McDonald’s Corp.
The use of foreign labour is poised to rise even more.
In April, the federal Liberals overhauled the TFW program, largely to give companies more access to low-wage workers from abroad. And employers still have plenty of jobs to fill: At last count, they were recruiting for about one million positions.
Companies say the pool of domestic workers is severely constrained. As of July, Canada’s unemployment rate had ebbed to 4.9 per cent – the lowest in more than four decades of data.
The TFW expansion was cheered by business lobby groups. But the move was panned by labour advocates and many economists. The TFW program has been dogged by controversy in past years over concerns about unpaid wages, unsafe living conditions for migrants and companies passing over Canadian job candidates. Critics also say it shields employers from the need to raise wages for domestic workers or make investments that improve the country’s languishing productivity (meaning its economic output per hour worked).
“How’s this really helping productivity?” asked Andrew Griffith, a former director-general at the federal immigration department. “The government is making it easier for them to bring in more workers and just keep doing the same thing with more labour, rather than trying to really invest in productivity.”
To hire through the TFW program, an employer must submit a Labour Market Impact Assessment to the federal government, demonstrating that it can’t find local workers to fill positions. Once the government approves the roles, foreign workers must get the required permits to begin their employment in Canada. The quarterly IRCC figures refer to approved positions, rather than workers with permits.
Companies are inclined to fill whatever positions have been approved, said Meika Lalonde, an immigration lawyer in Vancouver. “It’s administratively burdensome” for employers to apply, she said, and they also pay a filing fee of $1,000 for every position requested.
Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has ramped up its use of foreign labour, chief executive officer Michael McCain told analysts on a call last week. And Recipe Unlimited Corp., which owns several restaurant chains, including Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s and the Keg, is helping franchisees use the TFW program, CEO Frank Hennessey said on an Aug. 3 investor call.
At the end of 2021, there were roughly 82,000 foreign workers with TFW permits, the most since 2014, when the Harper government tightened access to the program following a string of controversies. Companies rely more on the International Mobility Program – which was hived off from the TFW program in the 2014 overhaul – to recruit temporary foreign labour.
The IMP includes a range of foreign workers, such as company transfers from abroad and those with postgraduate work permits. Notably, companies do not need to file LMIAs to hire through the program. At the end of 2021, there were more than 695,000 people with IMP permits.
International students have become another major source of labour supply. The number of international students with T4 earnings – that is, employment income – has soared to 354,000 in 2019, from 22,000 in 2000, according to Statistics Canada.
Of note. But should this be an addition to current levels or at the expense of economic or family class? Or to fulfill some of the labour demand currently being filled by Temporary Foreign Workers? And would waiving the visa requirement create pressures to do the same for other refugees?
A new report says Canada needs to change its federal visa policy to speed up the admission of Ukrainian refugees, which has slowed to a trickle.
The study by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy released Thursday says that compared to other countries, Canada has received a small number of the millions of Ukrainians who have been displaced since Russia invaded the eastern European country in February.
“Applications by Ukrainians are starting to far outstrip the number that are being granted by the Canadian government and we don’t even have a really clear picture of how many Ukrainians are coming into the country,” said author Robert Falconer.
Statistics show the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, which expedites visas and temporary residency permits for Ukrainians and their families, isn’t enough, he said.
As of June 22, there were approximately 190,000 Ukrainians with pending applications to come to Canada, up from 140,000 about one month earlier.
Falconer said the program, requiring those arriving to have visas, is to blame for Canada lagging behind other countries — most notably Ireland, which has waived its visa requirement.
“One of the objections within the committee in Parliament was if we let Ukrainians in, then Russian spies would use that to infiltrate the system,” he said.
“Russian espionage does exist, but the refugee channel is one of the more inefficient ways to try and infiltrate a Russian spy into the country.”
Falconer said federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, with proper resources, would be able to manage security risks involving the visa process. He recommends Canada adopt the Irish model or another option to do visa checks once people arrive.
“If we’re not doing the Irish model, I would say we do what’s called the on-arrival model, which is what a lot of countries do. When you arrive at the airport, you have to wait for a small period while the government officials run the security checks,” Falconer said.
“You do some risk assessments and can probably vet that eight-year-old kid who is probably not a Russian spy whereas an unaccompanied male in their mid-20s … you might hold them while you process the background check and let them into the country. Let them get here to safety first and then process them from there.”
Falconer said an overwhelming number of Canadians support bringing in a high number of Ukrainian refugees and our country has the highest percentage of people of Ukrainian descent next to Ukraine and Russia.
The report says Canada and the United Kingdom have similar processes for the admission of Ukrainian refugees and the numbers are comparable.
It says about 13 times the number of Ukrainian refugees per capita arrived in Ireland than in the United Kingdom during the first two months of the invasion.
Falconer said the findings of the report are to be forwarded to the federal government, but he isn’t sure whether it would result in a loosening of the requirements.
“I think they’re probably aware. I think they are very, very, very concerned — less with Ukrainians and more with how the overall immigration file is going generally.”
Interesting arguments but likely overstates the importance of dual citizenship as a factor in facilitating a return of former Chinese nationals to China, particularly given Chinese government general repression (not limited to Uyghurs and Hong Kong) and control (e.g., COVID lockdowns):
Citizenship has become a sensitive topic in China. Every so often, you’ll see lists in the Chinese media – of film stars who hold foreign passports, or billionaires who made money in China but now hold foreign passports. On the Chinese internet, some of these individuals get labelled as unpatriotic, or worse.
One of netizens’ latest targets is Harvard physics professor Xi Yin, a China-born prodigy who has been quoted as saying he has no plans to return to his native country at present. A US citizen now, Yin is also married to an American woman.
China does not allow dual citizenship. The line of reasoning seems to be that the authorities don’t want to create a group of people who enjoy too much privilege, or potentially allow criminals to evade punishment. Critics say it is a way of ensuring citizens’ loyalty or maintaining a monoculture.
But much of the rest of the world has moved on, with more countries embracing dual citizenship against the backdrop of globalisation. Back in the 1960s, only one-third of countries allowed dual citizenship. Today, 75 per cent do.
Perhaps China should follow suit. It would help reverse the brain drain from the country.
Around the time Deng Xiaoping launched the reform and opening up policy, students were sent abroad to study, in countries including the US, Canada and the UK. This trend did not always pay off. In 2007, China Daily reported that, between 1978 and 2006, 1.06 million Chinese went overseas for studies and more than 70 per cent chose not to return. At that time, China probably suffered the most severe brain drain in the world.
To tackle the problem, Beijing has increased investment in higher education, and research and development. It introduced programmes such as the Thousand Talents Planto lure back leading Chinese talent. Under the plan “sea turtles”, or returnees from overseas – in Chinese, the two terms are homonyms – may receive a one-time bonus of 1 million yuan (US$148,400). However, the programme has reportedly delivered mixed results. Not nearly enough sea turtles swim home.
As China grew rich, it became common practice among affluent families to send children abroad for further education. Between 2015 and 2019, 80 per cent of these students did return. Yet, China is still losing first-rate talent. In recent years, a reported 80 per cent of Chinese PhD students in the US have been reluctant to return.
Many developing countries in the world lose talent to the US, but China probably suffers more, especially in the realm of hi-tech. Those bright Chinese minds working at the cutting edge of American technology might also be hampering China’s own tech ambitions.
Indeed, China’s hope of dominating artificial intelligence may be threatened by the brain drain. According to a study conducted by MacroPolo, a think tank run by the Paulson Institute, Chinese researchers accounted for a quarter of the authors whose papers were accepted by a prestigious AI conference in 2019.
However, three-quarters of the Chinese authors were working outside China, and 85 per cent of those were working in the US, at tech giants such as Google or universities like UCLA.
Why aren’t they returning to their motherland? Various dynamics could be at work, including higher salaries, better research facilities and a more open environment in the West.
In the past days, the Chinese internet has been awash with stories of Xi Yin. Born into an intellectual family in central China’s Hunan province, he was a child prodigy who gained admission into the University of Science and Technology of China at the age of 12. Five years later, he left for Harvard to pursue his PhD. He is now a full professor at Harvard, who researches quantum gravity in low dimensions.
Regarding his decision to continue working in the US, he has been quoted as saying that he loves the research environment at Harvard and that science knows no borders. That sounds reasonable.
However, amid the Sino-US competition for primacy, whoever can harness more talent is likely to come out on top. Thus, addressing the brain drain becomes more urgent than ever.
One of the most effective ways to ease the problem would be to allow dual citizenship, which could help attract top talent as well as foreign investment.
It would make it easier for talented people to travel between China and their adopted country. It would also help them maintain their connections to both countries – connections that may lead to a deeper exchange of ideas, knowledge transfer, investment and even the return of these individuals.
Talent-exporting countries such as the Philippines, Mexico and Brazil have all adopted a dual-citizenship system.
In the past decade or so, Chinese experts including Wang Huiyao, the founder of the Center for China and Globalization, an influential think tank in China, have proposed the idea.
Professor David Zweig, a China expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, agrees too. He told me, “China does give permanent ‘green cards’ to mainlanders who return with overseas citizenship, but it would be better if it gave them dual citizenship and more rights than they have now.”
The Chinese government has shown flexibility with American-born ski star Eileen Gu, who competed for China in the 2022 Winter Olympics. It needs to go further.
Lijia Zhang is a rocket-factory worker turned social commentator, and the author of a novel, Lotus
Legitimate concerns about AI bias (which individual decision-makers have), also need to address “noise,” variability among decision-making by people for comparable cases:
It started with a single tweet in November 2019. David Heinemeier Hansson, a high-profile tech entrepreneur, lashed out at Apple’s newly launched credit card, calling it “sexist” for offering his wife a credit limit 20 times lower than his own.
The allegations spread like wildfire, with Hansson stressing that artificial intelligence – now widely used to make lending decisions – was to blame. “It does not matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate. This is fucked up.”
While Apple and its underwriters Goldman Sachs were ultimately cleared by US regulators of violating fair lending rules last year, it rekindled a wider debate around AI use across public and private industries.
Politicians in the European Union are now planning to introduce the first comprehensive global template for regulating AI, as institutions increasingly automate routine tasks in an attempt to boost efficiency and ultimately cut costs.
That legislation, known as the Artificial Intelligence Act, will have consequences beyond EU borders, and like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, will apply to any institution, including UK banks, that serves EU customers. “The impact of the act, once adopted, cannot be overstated,” said Alexandru Circiumaru, European public policy lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute.
Depending on the EU’s final list of “high risk” uses, there is an impetus to introduce strict rules around how AI is used to filter job, university or welfare applications, or – in the case of lenders – assess the creditworthiness of potential borrowers.
EU officials hope that with extra oversight and restrictions on the type of AI models that can be used, the rules will curb the kind of machine-based discrimination that could influence life-altering decisions such as whether you can afford a home or a student loan.
“AI can be used to analyse your entire financial health including spending, saving, other debt, to arrive at a more holistic picture,” Sarah Kocianski, an independent financial technology consultant said. “If designed correctly, such systems can provide wider access to affordable credit.”
But one of the biggest dangers is unintentional bias, in which algorithms end up denying loans or accounts to certain groups including women, migrants or people of colour.
Part of the problem is that most AI models can only learn from historical data they have been fed, meaning they will learn which kind of customer has previously been lent to and which customers have been marked as unreliable. “There is a danger that they will be biased in terms of what a ‘good’ borrower looks like,” Kocianski said. “Notably, gender and ethnicity are often found to play a part in the AI’s decision-making processes based on the data it has been taught on: factors that are in no way relevant to a person’s ability to repay a loan.”
Furthermore, some models are designed to be blind to so-called protected characteristics, meaning they are not meant to consider the influence of gender, race, ethnicity or disability. But those AI models can still discriminate as a result of analysing other data points such as postcodes, which may correlate with historically disadvantaged groups that have never previously applied for, secured, or repaid loans or mortgages.
And in most cases, when an algorithm makes a decision, it is difficult for anyone to understand how it came to that conclusion, resulting in what is commonly referred to as “black-box” syndrome. It means that banks, for example, might struggle to explain what an applicant could have done differently to qualify for a loan or credit card, or whether changing an applicant’s gender from male to female might result in a different outcome.
Circiumaru said the AI act, which could come into effect in late 2024, would benefit tech companies that managed to develop what he called “trustworthy AI” models that are compliant with the new EU rules.
Darko Matovski, the chief executive and co-founder of London-headquartered AI startup causaLens, believes his firm is among them.
The startup, which publicly launched in January 2021, has already licensed its technology to the likes of asset manager Aviva, and quant trading firm Tibra, and says a number of retail banks are in the process of signing deals with the firm before the EU rules come into force.
The entrepreneur said causaLens offers a more advanced form of AI that avoids potential bias by accounting and controlling for discriminatory correlations in the data. “Correlation-based models are learning the injustices from the past and they’re just replaying it into the future,” Matovski said.
He believes the proliferation of so-called causal AI models like his own will lead to better outcomes for marginalised groups who may have missed out on educational and financial opportunities.
“It is really hard to understand the scale of the damage already caused, because we cannot really inspect this model,” he said. “We don’t know how many people haven’t gone to university because of a haywire algorithm. We don’t know how many people weren’t able to get their mortgage because of algorithm biases. We just don’t know.”
Matovski said the only way to protect against potential discrimination was to use protected characteristics such as disability, gender or race as an input but guarantee that regardless of those specific inputs, the decision did not change.
He said it was a matter of ensuring AI models reflected our current social values and avoided perpetuating any racist, ableist or misogynistic decision-making from the past. “Society thinks that we should treat everybody equal, no matter what gender, what their postcode is, what race they are. So then the algorithms must not only try to do it, but they must guarantee it,” he said.
While the EU’s new rules are likely to be a big step in curbing machine-based bias, some experts, including those at the Ada Lovelace Institute, are pushing for consumers to have the right to complain and seek redress if they think they have been put at a disadvantage.
“The risks posed by AI, especially when applied in certain specific circumstances, are real, significant and already present,” Circiumaru said.
“AI regulation should ensure that individuals will be appropriately protected from harm by approving or not approving uses of AI and have remedies available where approved AI systems malfunction or result in harms. We cannot pretend approved AI systems will always function perfectly and fail to prepare for the instances when they won’t.”
Pendant qu’on débat pour la millionième fois sur le port du hidjab au Québec — cette semaine à cause de réactions à une publicité de HEC Montréal —, une nouvelle étude sur la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État vient d’être publiée.
Produite par l’Association des études canadiennes, en collaboration avec SurveyMonkey et la firme de sondage Léger, cette étude a été menée auprès de 1828 adultes québécois, dont 632 musulmans, 165 juifs et 54 sikhs. Léger a utilisé les données de Statistique Canada pour que l’échantillon sondé soit représentatif de la population étudiée.
L’étude confirme que la majorité de la population (63,7 %) appuie la « loi 21 ». Ce chiffre tombe à 60 % si on inclut l’option « je ne sais pas », et à 57 % si l’on spécifie « telle qu’elle s’applique aux enseignants ».
Mais l’étude innove en comparant les arguments souvent entendus pour défendre la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État avec les données amassées. L’effet de contraste est saisissant.
D’abord, on avance souvent que la « loi 21 » est « neutre » — c’est-à-dire qu’elle ne vise aucune religion en particulier — et que ses appuis ne sont pas liés à une animosité particulière envers une religion ou une autre. Or, l’étude calcule que 75 % des partisans convaincus du texte législatif ont une opinion négative de l’islam ; 66 % du sikhisme ; 49 % du judaïsme ; 36,5 % du christianisme.
Il se dégage donc ici, selon la chercheuse principale de l’étude, Miriam Taylor, une « hiérarchie de négativité » envers les religions particulièrement marquée.
Parallèlement, la proportion des opposants convaincus à la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État qui ont une opinion négative de ces quatre mêmes religions oscille entre 18 % et 20 %, sans conviction que certaines valent mieux que d’autres.
Ensuite, on dit souvent que les appuis à « loi 21 » sont motivés par une méfiance particulière envers la religion en général ; l’étude a par conséquent voulu mesurer si les personnes elles-mêmes peu religieuses étaient plus nombreuses à soutenir cette législation. Or, on n’a trouvé aucun lien majeur entre la religiosité des répondants et leur appui ou opposition à la loi. Même qu’au contraire, les Québécois qui s’identifient comme catholiques seraient « légèrement plus favorables » à la loi que ceux qui se disent athées.
Fossé hommes-femmes
Par ailleurs, on entend souvent que la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État québécois est profondément féministe, et que c’est au nom de l’égalité hommes-femmes qu’elle a été mise en avant. L’enquête s’est donc intéressée à l’écart dans les appuis à la loi selon le genre.
On a calculé que 68,5 % des hommes et 59 % des femmes au Québec appuieraient la loi, un écart de près de 10 points de pourcentage. Chez les plus jeunes, l’écart est encore plus marqué : 51,7 % des hommes de 18 à 24 ans appuient la loi, alors que seulement 31,5 % de leurs consoeurs font de même. Seules les femmes de 75 ans et plus sont plus favorables à la loi que les hommes de leur groupe d’âge.
L’étude avance également que les femmes québécoises sont plus nombreuses à trouver que « la loi est discriminatoire envers les femmes », que les femmes sont « plus touchées » par cette mesure législative, et que la loi « divise les Québécois ». Les femmes seraient aussi moins nombreuses à trouver que les Québécois qui s’opposent à la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État sont « déloyaux » et à souhaiter qu’une personne qui ne s’y conforme pas perde son emploi.
Existe-t-il une seule autre politique publique dite « féministe » moins appuyée par les femmes que par les hommes ? Ou serait-ce que, dans ce cas-ci, les femmes savent moins bien discerner que les hommes ce qui est bon pour elles ?
Vivre-ensemble
De plus, on répète souvent que la « loi 21 » exprime une volonté collective, et donc que les tribunaux ne devraient pas se « mêler » des décisions de l’Assemblée nationale sur la question.
Pourtant, 64,5 % des Québécois sondés croient qu’il serait important « que la Cour suprême émette un avis sur la question de savoir si la loi 21 est discriminatoire », et seuls 46,7 % des répondants continueraient à l’appuyer si les tribunaux « confirment » qu’elle « viole les chartes des droits et libertés ». On parlerait donc ici d’une chute de 18 points de pourcentage dans les appuis en cas d’une décision négative des tribunaux sur la question.
Finalement, la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État est souvent présentée comme un outil favorisant l’harmonie sociale et le vivre-ensemble.
Or, en sondant spécifiquement les Québécois musulmans, juifs et sikhs, l’étude a trouvé qu’une majorité dans les trois groupes rapporte « un déclin dans leur sentiment d’acceptation en tant que membres à part entière de la société québécoise » depuis l’adoption du texte législatif. Quelque 64 % des femmes musulmanes, 67 % des hommes sikhs et 87,5 % des femmes sikhs qui ont participé à l’étude ont dit avoir senti leur capacité à participer à la vie sociale et politique du Québec se détériorer depuis 2019. Et 67 % des femmes musulmanes, 50 % des hommes juifs et 67 % hommes sikhs ont aussi déclaré avoir été exposés à des incidents et à des crimes haineux.
Cette portion de l’étude inclut d’ailleurs des témoignages qui donnent froid dans le dos. Bien qu’il s’agisse de la plus vaste enquête sur cette question conduite auprès des minorités religieuses québécoises depuis l’adoption de la loi, l’échantillon total reste modeste.
Espérons que d’autres recherches encore plus ambitieuses seront mises en avant pour faire la lumière sur ces enjeux cruciaux.
Not surprising that language attachment stronger in Quebec and among Indigenous peoples. The margin of 3 percent among all Canadians not significant given online poll:
A new survey finds more Canadians report a strong attachment to their primary language than to other markers of identity, including the country they call home.
The survey, which was conducted by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies, found 88 per cent of respondents reported a strong sense of attachment to their primary language, whereas 85 per cent reported the same for Canada.
The greater importance of language was especially notable among francophones and Indigenous Peoples.
Reports of strong attachment to primary language exceeded all other markers of identity, including geography, ethnic group, racialized identity and religious affiliation.
Of the markers of identity considered in the survey, Canadians were the least likely to report a strong sense of attachment to a religious group.
Association for Canadian Studies president Jack Jedwab said the survey’s findings highlight the important role language plays in people’s identities.
“I think many Canadians may be surprised by it, who may not think intuitively that language is as important as other expressions of identity that get attention,” he said.
Jedwab said people should be mindful of not downplaying the importance of language given how significant language can be to a community. He said language has a dual function of facilitating communication and being an expression of culture.
“There can be a tendency for people to diminish the importance of other languages,” he said.
“We’ve not paid historically sufficient attention to Indigenous languages, which we’re now seeing our federal government invest considerably in, trying to help sustain and revive Indigenous languages,” he added.
The online survey was completed by 1,764 Canadians between July 8 and 10. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because online polls are not considered truly random samples.
For Canadians whose primary language is French, 91 per cent reported a strong sense of attachment to their language, in comparison to 67 per cent who reported the same sentiment for Canada.
In Quebec, more people reported a strong sense of attachment to their primary language than to the province.
Only 37 per cent of Canadians reported a strong sense of attachment to a religious group.
The findings come ahead of Statistics Canada’s latest census release on languages in the country, which is set to be published on Wednesday.
Jedwab said the census release will be especially important to Quebec, where there’s a close monitoring of the state of the French language in comparison to other languages.
The Leger survey also found more than half of francophone Quebecers say they know English well enough to hold a conversation. That’s in contrast to less than one in 10 English respondents in all provinces except Quebec and New Brunswick who say they can hold a conversation in French.
According to the last census, English-French bilingualism rose from 17.5 per cent in 2011 to 17.9 per cent in 2016, reaching the highest rate of bilingualism in Canadian history. Over 60 per cent of that growth in bilingualism was attributable to Quebec.
Last week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie reintroduced to federal parliament the Ending Indefinite and Arbitrary Immigration Detention Bill 2022. This bill gives Australia the chance to bring its immigration detention regime in line with basic international law requirements for the first time since 1992.Wilkie’s bill presents a timely opportunity for the new federal government to reform a regime that leading legal and human rights organisations have called “inhumane, unnecessary, and unlawful”.
Australia’s human rights commitment
Australia has committed to uphold human rights and protect refugees, including committing to not arbitrarily or indefinitely detain adults or children. Despite this, under Australia’s current mandatory detention regime, non-citizens without a valid visa must be detained as a first resort for potentially indefinite periods and without access to review by a court.Australia’s commitments under international law are not enforceable under Australian law unless they are implemented through legislation. This means that in the absence of legislation that fully protects the right to liberty, the Australian High Court has consistently held that indefinite immigration detention is lawful under Australian law.
International criticism
The UN has repeatedly condemned Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees as contrary to Australia’s international obligations and “an affront to the protection of human rights”. This includes statements and decisions from:
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in 2018
the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, in 2017
the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, in 2015 and 2017
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in 2017
International criticisms have largely focused on Australia’s failure to respect the rights of individuals to not be detained arbitrarily or indefinitely; subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; or returned to a place where they will face a real risk of harm.Despite widespread condemnation of Australia’s system of mandatory and indefinite detention, over 1400 people remain in onshore immigration detention facilities today. A further 217 people remain on Nauru and Manus.In April 2022, the average period of time people were held in immigration detention facilities in Australia was 726 days. Of those in onshore detention, 136 have been detained for more than five years.
“Detention without charge or guilt”
Wilkie’s bill proposes abolishing the existing system of mandatory detention. Under the bill, detention of non-citizens without valid visas could only be ordered where it is necessary and proportionate to the circumstances. This would require an individual assessment.Detention would be authorised in Australia only (not offshore) for certain purposes, and only as a measure of last resort after all alternatives have been considered. Adults could only be detained for a maximum of three months and children for seven days. While extensions may be necessary in certain circumstances, detention would be subject to independent oversight and judicial review by the courts.When introducing the bill, Wilkie argued this legislation was urgently needed as
we face the bizarre and outrageous situation in this country where someone, in some circumstances, can be detained indefinitely, without charge and without having been found guilty of anything.
He described this as a punitive arrangement that is immoral and shows “a terrible indifference and arrogance to international law”.In seconding the bill, independent MP Kylea Tink said“Australia’s immigration regime is unique in the world. It is uniquely cruel.” Tink also noted Wilkie’s point that the regime came with a vast financial and human toll, costing Australian taxpayers between $360,000 – $460,000 per year to hold a person in immigration detention in Australia.Independent MP Monique Ryan recognised that
Australia’s immigration detention regime causes severe and widespread mental and physical health impacts on people seeking refuge.
Australia’s negative human rights record also affects its ability to hold other countries to account for human rights violations. China accused Australia of human rights hypocrisy after it criticised China’s repression of the Uyghur ethnic minority. And China is certainly not alone in its criticisms.While legislation alone is not enough, it could provide a significant first step in bringing Australia’s immigration detention regime in line with its human rights obligations.Both major political parties in Australia have historically supported onshore and offshore mandatory detention of non-citizens.However, with the current make-up of the parliament and a new government committed to uniting Australians around “our shared values of fairness and opportunity” and “kindness to those in need”, this is an opportunity for Australia to demonstrate a renewed commitment to international law and the fundamental principles on which the UN system is based.
Sigh… As always, apart from the substance, lack of transparency and predictability on timelines cross-cut virtually all IRCC administrative problems:
A former Canadian military legal officer says a group of Afghan lawyers and other staff who helped his mission in Afghanistan have been “left in the dark,” and is urging Canada’s Immigration Ministry to act quickly to help them escape the Taliban.
It’s been one year since Canada began accepting fleeing Afghans through its one-year special immigration program for Afghans who helped the Canadian government, set up a few weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
To date, roughly 17,170 Afghans have arrived in Canada. Last month, the Liberal government closed its immigration program to new applicants, less than halfway toward its goal of bringing 40,000 Afghans to Canada.
“If [Canada] would not act upon my request and as soon as possible, I could lose my life,” said Popal, one of the Afghan military prosecutors who applied for this program, and whom CBC has agreed not to identify.
“When Popal called me for help, it was very heart-wrenching,” said retired major Cory Moore, a former military legal officer with the Canadian Armed Forces who was deployed three times to Afghanistan.
Moore is helping 12 applicants and their families apply for this program, and is still waiting for word from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on the fate of these 66 people. Their applications were filed between September and December 2021.
The group includes military prosecutors, criminal investigators, security staff, recruitment video participants, a doctor and a journalist.
All 12 Afghans were involved in various capacities during Moore’s mission to help bolster the Afghan National Army’s legal branch. He created a project to recruit Afghan law grads, making a recruitment video which aired nationally from 2012 to 2021.
As a result, eight female military lawyers were hired as prosecutors and criminal investigators with the military, in what Moore calls a “historical precedent.”
“During the period in time in which we were doing the video shooting, it was a particularly dangerous time in Kabul when I had a target on my back,” he said.
“They never left my side. They never cut and run…. It’s why Canada can’t turn its back on them now.”
‘We are getting hopeless’
Popal, who appeared in that recruitment video, was an Afghan army prosecutor for 10 years.
Through WhatsApp video chat, Popal said he and his family are in “extreme danger” because of his involvement with the recruitment project.
“We are getting hopeless and … we are just waiting for our death,” he said in Dari, through an interpreter.
Popal, who was reduced to tears during the conversation, said it’s been a year of hardship for his family. His kids can’t go to school or appear in public spaces, and he’s unable to work so it’s been difficult to put food on the table. The family is facing “serious threats,” he said.
“The danger we are facing is because we helped Canadians.”
Maryam, whose identity CBC has also agreed to protect because she’s also in hiding, is the first of the eight female lawyers hired as a result of Moore’s project. (Three of the lawyers have not yet been accounted for, Moore said.)
She prosecuted Taliban members accused of infiltrating the Afghan National Army. She also criminally investigated sexual assault cases involving Afghan military members who committed offences against army nurses.
“I’m in danger because of that position,” she said in Dari, through an interpreter.
Maryam spoke about the mental health impact the wait has had on her and her family.
“We’ve all got kind of psychological issues, psychological problems,” she said, pleading through tears: “Justin Trudeau … please get us out of here. Please, evacuate us from here…. We cannot live here anymore.”
Silence from department
Moore contacted IRCC several times this spring about the status of the 12 applications.
“I wasn’t hearing anything,” he said. “They explained that none of the 12 applicants … were coming up in their system.”
After seeking clarity from other agents, Moore said one of them told him this: “She explained that if you had been screened out at the initial review stage, you’re not invited formally to make [an] application … and if you don’t receive an email like that, then your case just disappears.”
To date, none of the 12 Afghans received an email from IRCC about their application status. The government website instructs applicants to “wait for us to contact you” once an application has been submitted.
“They don’t receive anything. They’re just left in the dark,” said Moore.
“[For Canada] to shut the door on a group of people who were so intimately involved in helping me succeed with my project, it’s unfathomable.”
By speaking publicly, Moore wants to stress how each applicant played a critical role in helping him and the Canadian military.
“There’s no question that Afghanistan was made better by their work with me,” said Moore. “And quite honestly, I think Canada is a better place with this fine group of people in it.”
Tight timeline a ‘slap in the face’
Tamar Boghossian, an immigration lawyer with Boghossian Morais LLP, is helping Moore with the case. Last week, she refiled and updated all 12 applications.
Boghossian said all 12 applicants meet the government’s eligibility requirements, which she called “very vague.” The government lists just two examples of who can apply — Afghan nationals who worked at the Canadian embassy, or interpreters — but adds the program “is not limited to” those professions.
The issue, Boghossian said, is that the program has “no transparency.” The short timeline is also problematic, as the one-year program has already expired, she added.
“It’s a slap in the face … to those who actually helped the Canadian government,” said Boghossian. “Why can’t we help these individuals in return?”
She explained that most individuals who’ve applied to this special program don’t have proper documentation or passports, and are having difficulty obtaining them because they’re in hiding.
She’s urging the Trudeau government to not only extend the deadline for applications, but to also expand the number of people Canada will receive.
“40,000 applicants is not a lot for, you know, Canada being in Afghanistan for almost 15 years,” Boghossian said.
Government decision ‘shameful,’ says MP
During a news conference last month, Conservative MP and IRCC shadow minister Jasraj Singh Hallan called the Liberal government’s decision to wind down its one-year program “shameful.”
The Conservatives are among those calling on the government to reopen the special immigration program, and Hallan said it’s Canada’s “moral responsibility to help those who served alongside our country.”
“The government’s decision to shut down the [special program] is unconscionable,” Hallan said.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan has said the government’s claim that other immigration avenues remain open to Afghans is “deceptive.”
“That is just a rejection,” she said.
Ministry working ‘as quickly as possible’
On behalf of IRCC, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s office said it could not comment on the 12 applicants’ cases for privacy reasons.
The ministry said it’s received 15,210 applications under the special program, and has approved about two-thirds of them so far.
“We are working to process applications as quickly as possible,” wrote Aidan Strickland, the minister’s spokesperson, noting the resettlement initiative for Afghans is uniquely challenging.
Strickland said the eligibility requirements are meant “to be as inclusive as possible,” and can include cooks, drivers and other staff who helped Canada’s military.
“We have accomplished much, but there is still more work to be done,” she wrote.
The office did not say whether it will reopen the program.
Multicultural Meanderings 