Ray: Critical Race Theory’s Merchants of Doubt

2022/08/03 Leave a comment

Important context:

Protests over George Floyd’s 2020 murder were the largest civil rights demonstrations in American history. The brutal footage of officer Derek Chauvin’s suffocating knee on George Floyd’s neck led many white Americans to, at least briefly, acknowledge the reality of structural racism in policing. In response, corporations questioned their diversity policies, “defund the police” became an activist rallying cry, and books on anti-racism became unexpected bestsellers. A narrative arose that America experienced a “racial reckoning” that challenged white racism’s worst excesses.

Conservative media and think tanks, fearing a lost battle in the war of ideas over racism in American life, counter-mobilized. Morality plays need villains, and conservative activists conjured a caricature of critical race theory—a forty-year-old academic framework–as an ominous and pervasive evil. Conservative groups claimed their villain was everywhere—from the federal bureaucracy to elementary schools—and fomented a moral panic over anti-racist education. Pundits credited Virginia Governor Greg Youngkin’s win to his scaring white parents into thinking their children might learn about the nation’s history of white supremacy. Conservative lawmakers have exploited the panic, attempting to remake the educational landscape with banning so-called “divisive concepts” that might make white kids uncomfortable. Propaganda victories are victories, nonetheless. And killing the messenger can destroy the message (if you can’t beat them, ban them). “Facts don’t care about your feelings” has become a conservative rallying cry. But critical race theory’s merchants of doubt, by legislating against accurate teaching of America’s racial history, put their feelings over empirical facts.
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But victories aside, propaganda exposes its proponents’ intellectual bankruptcy. Conservative caricatures of critical race theory are unrecognizable to scholars familiar with the idea. According to the Washington Post, Christopher Rufo, the principal architect of the anti-critical race theory of moral panic admitted his crusade distorted the meaning of critical race theory when he tweeted:

“We have successfully frozen their brand—’critical race theory—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

Incoherence and confusion are virtues for opponents of anti-racist teaching. And Rufo and his fellow travelers are simply updating the misinformation campaigns targeting accepted scholarship that elements of the right have trafficked in for decades. Heedless of both the actual content of critical race theory and the human cost of their panic, conservatives turned to propaganda because the weight of empirical evidence undermines their ideological preferences.

In their classic book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, the historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway outline a series of propaganda campaigns designed to undermine the scientific consensus on many of our most pressing collective problems. Conservative scientists, politicians, and think tanks sowed confusion over the link between cancer and smoking, acid rain’s environmental impact, and civilizational threats over global warming. Conspirators exploited the structure of scientific inquiry—which contains inherent uncertainties—to cast doubt on settled facts. Conspirators also played the media, manipulating the false objectivityof both-sides framing to claim equal time for scientific consensus and quackery. The strategy of sowing confusion works not because anti-empirical claims are correct but because manufactured uncertainty is often enough to bring political action to a halt.

Anti-scientific campaigns, whether focused on acid rain or climate change, often relied upon a close-knit cabal of think tanks, funders, and individual scientists (who sometimes lacked subject area expertise). Corporate profits and individual livelihoods were at risk if facts about the harms of smoking or environmental crisis were acknowledged and regulated. For short-term financial or political gain, anti-science propagandists made progress on long-term collective problems difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. In the meantime, these propagandists profited as the harms from industries they were protecting were passed onto an unsuspecting and credulous public.

Critical race theory’s merchants of doubt use strategies similar to those of previous anti-intellectual propaganda campaigns. And like these prior movements, the moral panic over critical race theory rests on a weak intellectual foundation.

No serious analyst doubts that American society is rife with racial inequality. Yes, there is debate among social scientists about the cause of racial inequality. But the consensus among honest scholars is that racial inequality is a long-standing, complex, intractable, and pressing social problem. The empirical evidence on structural racism and the inequality it produces is massive, overwhelming, and hard to contest. From unemployment to life expectancy, it is difficult to find a domain of American life where Black people aren’t worse off. Critical race theorists developed a flexible set of tenets that showed how often seemingly neutral social processes reproduce racial inequality. And these tenets were so useful they’ve been adopted by scholars of education, public policy, and sociology. Critical race theory’s main principles—that race is a social construction and racial progress is fragile and easily overturned—have substantial empirical support.

Intellectual weakness on race matters doesn’t make the anti-critical race theory campaign any less dangerous. Desperation and ruthlessness born of knowing facts aren’t on their side may make the campaigns more treacherous. Accuracy isn’t necessary to terrify teachers into changing lesson plans and avoiding basic truths about the American past (and present) or mangling lectures to make understanding difficult. Teachers are worried that clear explanations of slavery and Native American genocide may run afoul of the law and have received physical threats for vowing to teach the truth about American history.

I’m hardly the first analyst to connect attacks on critical race theory and prior ignorance promoting campaigns. Several historians have shown the similarities between the Scopes Money Trial—perhaps the paradigmatic case of anti-intellectual campaigns in U.S. history—and the moral panic surrounding critical race theory. Adam R. Shapiro notes that “Darwinism had been around for about half a century,” when it became the object of conservative ire. Shapiro claims that it wasn’t Darwin’s theory, per se, that led to opposition. The scientific consensus around Darwinism was representative of larger cultural trends that worried conservatives. Evolution stood in for a broad swath of economic, cultural, and political changes. The backlash to critical race theory is driven by a similar set of fears of lost white prerogative amidst cultural and demographic change.

Historical connections between the Scopes Monkey Trial and the current moral panic aren’t simply analogies. Christopher Rufo, who has been credited with taking the moral panic mainstream, is a former employee of the anti-evolution Discovery Institute. Perhaps better described as an anti-think tank, the Discovery Institute promotes misinformation around evolutionary theory, arguing that in place of the scientific consensus, schools should “teach the controversy.” Of course, there is little controversy among biologists aside from what the Discovery Institute itself foments. Claiming there is a scientific controversy where none exists muddies the waters, allowing unscrupulous actors to push their political agenda. Conspiracy theories travel in packs, and the Discovery Institute also promotes climate change denial and raises questions about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Ideas from critical race theory can help explain moral panic. Moral panics are immoral exercises, designed to create group cohesion, target ideological or political enemies, and shape norms. Critical race theorists draw attention to structural racism to find solutions to racial inequality. Critical Race Theorists maintain that structural racism is a profitable political system for the system’s beneficiaries. Finding solutions to climate change and tobacco addition threaten those who benefit from emissions and smoking. And finding solutions to racial inequality threatens those who benefit from structural racism. 2020’s protests put these beneficiaries on notice, so it’s no surprise they responded to defend their interests. Banning teaching about racism is a justification of existing racial inequality and a prelude to producing more. Barring teaching about diversity distorts basic facts about American life and creates the idea that difference is strange or dangerous.

Legislators claim they want to stop divisive teaching and are worried about lessons that demonize white people. But what is more divisive than outlawing basic descriptive facts about American history? Critical race theory doesn’t demonize white people. But by blocking teaching about America’s segregationists, eugenicists, and white citizen councilors, legislators may end up demonizing themselves. Dr. King warned about the dangers of this racial ignorance when he said, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

Academic knowledge production depends upon good faith and verifiable fact. And when facts about structural racism make their way into the schools, they ban books and threaten teachers. It makes collective problems harder to solve.

Source: Critical Race Theory’s Merchants of Doubt

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Former MP calls on Parliament Hill security to stop racial profiling

2022/08/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

A former MP who says she was racially profiled by parliamentary security last month is calling on the service to address racism within its ranks.

Celina Caesar-Chavannes said she was questioned by the Parliamentary Protective Service members in June when she tried to access the precinct wearing her parliamentary pin.

The pin, worn by current and former MPs, is meant to grant the wearer access to any building on the parliamentary precinct without having their bags and person searched, she said. But she said security services asked her where she got the pin and tried to do a search anyway.

Caesar-Chavannes was elected as a Liberal MP in 2015 for the riding of Whitby, Ont., but left the caucus in March 2019 and sat as an Independent member until the election that fall.

After she was questioned, Caesar-Chavannes said former New Democrat MP Peggy Nash was able to walk through security without incident.

“Peggy left politics long before I did,” said Caesar-Chavannes. “Nobody’s expecting them to recognize us, but the pin is universal. Security knows what that is.”

Nash was an MP for the Parkdale-High Park riding in Toronto from 2006 to 2008, and regained her seat in 2011 until 2015.

Source: Former MP calls on Parliament Hill security to stop racial profiling

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with

Ottawa cheated 107 Iranians out of a fair shot at their Canadian dream, judge finds

2022/08/03 Leave a comment

Yet another example of IRCC struggles to manage demand and took a shortcut that was justifiably called out for by the court. Kudos to the lawyer involved, Pantea Jafari:

The Federal Court has ordered Canada’s immigration department to reconsider the cases of 107 Iranian immigration applicants who were turned down en masse.

The court also ordered the immigration department to pay the litigants a total of $50,000 in costs — one of the highest amounts ever awarded in an immigration case.

In what he called “an unusual circumstance of litigation,” Justice Henry S. Brown said he had no difficulty finding immigration senior management made “a deliberate and calculated decision” that “reduced” the rights — and fairness — for the applicants.

The issue arose after the files of the applicants — all Iranians who were seeking to come to Canada under the self-employed category of economic immigrants — were moved from a backlogged visa post in Ankara, Turkey, in March 2018 so they could instead be processed in the office in Warsaw, Poland.

There, the applications were all refused for failing to demonstrate the ability and intent to become self-employed in Canada.

At issue was whether the “mass” refusals made in “haste” — according to the applicants’ claim — were the direct result of an effort to clear a backlog, allegedly “at the cost of violation of legal principles.”

The judge was sympathetic to the applicants’ cause.

“Those whose applications are filed before a decision-maker institutes material changes in procedure are entitled to have notice of and be given an opportunity to refile or otherwise so as to comply with the new procedures,” Brown wrote in a 76-page decision last Friday. 

“Failure by a decision-maker to provide an applicant with notice of the case to meet constitutes a breach of procedural fairness.”

Rokhsar MousaviNezhad, a Persian carpet designer and maker, said she and other litigants — who initiated the suit in 2018 — were happy with the decision.

“We were treated unfairly and the court understood what happened,” said MousaviNezhad. “It restored our faith in the Canadian judicial system.

“We hope immigration is now going to act on our applications” according to the court instructions, she said.

The self-employed immigration program is meant to lure exemplary athletes, artists and farmers. The Iranian applicants in this program had been processed by the Ankara visa office, but 479 files in this category were transferred to Warsaw on March 7, 2018, due to backlogs in Turkey.

The court heard that the success rate of self-employed applications by Iranians plummeted from around 80 to 85 per cent between 2015 and 2017, when they were processed by Ankara, to less than 50 per cent when processed by the Warsaw office.

It identified a number of problematic procedural issues when immigration officials in 2016 “purported” to replace an operational manual that had been in place for at least eight years with a new one to guide visa officers in processing applications under the self-employed class.

The older manual referred to the possibility of interviews with applicants and actually instructed visa officers that formal business plans should be “discouraged” where they “would entail unnecessary expense and administrative burden” to the applicants. 

Under the old guideline, officers were also “expressly” advised that if they had “concerns about eligibility or inadmissibility, the applicant must be given a fair opportunity to correct or contradict those concerns” in compliance with the procedural fairness requirements.

“It seems to me this language strongly tends to require visa officers to deal with these concerns through procedural fairness letters, or possibly even through interviews,” wrote Justice Brown.

“The entirety of this procedural fairness-focussed provision was eliminated … Its wholesale removal cannot be seen as other than a deliberate, significant and material reduction in the legitimate expectations of procedural fairness.”

The court was told officials in Ankara always adhered to the practice of asking for supplementary documents, accompanied by a detailed checklist of other documents for additional information required to support a self-employed application, which Brown said was necessary, given lengthy immigration backlog and delays. 

However, he said, officials in Warsaw not only ended the practice of sending supplementary document requests, but made “material change” in assessing an applicant’s business plans and evidence of the person’s intent and ability to establish in Canada.

Given that Ankara had regularly approved Iranian self-employed applications without going into a great deal of specifics in the business plans, the judge said that also gave rise to justified expectations among applicants about the level of detail expected of the business plans they submitted for assessment.

“This legitimate expectation was not carried over to the Warsaw visa post, which rejected a great number of Iranian SE applications based in whole or part on perceived inadequacies of business plans filed in support of ability and intent,” Brown pointed out.

“This resulted in claims being dismissed without the applicants knowing the case they had to meet or having a full and fair chance to respond.”

Although it’s within immigration officials’ authority to replace operational manuals and change procedures, the judge said they did not notify the litigants in the system or prospective claimants, nor did they provide an opportunity to refile to meet “these significantly different requirements.”

Given the lack of notification, the court ruled that only those Iranian self-employed applicants whose cases were filed within six months (when represented by legal counsel) or nine months (if self-represented) after the new operational manual was introduced in 2016 and the applications were moved to Warsaw should be given a chance for reconsideration.

Due to the different timelines of the litigated cases, the judge only sent the eight lead cases back for reconsideration under the old rules and procedures, while asking immigration officials to review the rest and determine which ones meet the timeline and should be reopened.

Pantea Jafari, lawyer for the litigants, said the remaining 99 cases will be examined and those that meet the timeline under the court order will be automatically reopened and resolved, while the rest would be further adjudicated either by negotiation or by a further court order, if necessary.

She said Brown’s decision has a significant implication in the administrative law in the immigration context.

“Essentially, any time where an instruction set to officers or clients from the respondent has been persistent for a prolonged period of time — in our case, eight years — people can argue that created a legitimate expectation that would be followed,” said Jafari.

“Where the respondent makes significant changes to forms, processes, things like that, it is now under the purview of requiring some sort of notice of that or it will be deemed reasonable for people to have relied on the old versions within six or nine months.”

Source: Ottawa cheated 107 Iranians out of a fair shot at their Canadian dream, judge finds

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Que se passe-t-il avec les demandes de visa pour le Canada? [sigh…]

2022/08/03 Leave a comment

Another are of problems at IRCC. Surprising in one sense as visitor visas have been one of the programs that has advanced the most on AI, and thus should be reaping benefits of faster processing for most cases. Requiring applicants to resubmit applications is not, needless to say, good service practice:

En contradiction avec l’information affichée sur son site Web, le gouvernement fédéral demande à certains visiteurs de déposer une seconde demande de visa pour le Canada si leur première a eu le malheur de se retrouver dans la pile des dossiers non traités lors de la pandémie. Une « file d’attente » au sort incertain qui cause bien des maux de tête.

« Si vous devez voyager au Canada en ce moment, veuillez noter qu’une nouvelle demande devrait être soumise. »

L’avocat spécialisé en immigration Denis Girard a été surpris de la réponse que lui a envoyée le bureau des visas de Dakar le 13 décembre 2021, alors qu’il se questionnait sur l’important retard dans la délivrance du visa de visiteur d’une de ses clientes originaires du Mali.

Celle-ci voulait venir visiter sa fille et ses petits-enfants au Canada, un voyage pour lequel elle fait une demande le 25 juillet précédent. Mais voilà que dans ce courriel, que Le Devoir a consulté, on demandait sans explication à la dame de refaire le processus. C’est qu’un événement important est survenu entre-temps : le Canada a rouvert ses frontières aux voyageurs vaccinés venant au pays pour des raisons non essentielles.

Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC) en a profité pour balancer toutes les demandes de visa effectuées avant cette date dans un étrange purgatoire bureaucratique où sont coincés des milliers de dossiers sans que leurs auteurs en soient informés. Cela a eu pour effet de faire gonfler les statistiques d’attente pour l’obtention d’un visa dans certains pays.

Sur son site Web, IRCC recommande aux personnes qui ont soumis une demande de visa de visiteur avant le 7 septembre 2021 d’en soumettre une nouvelle si leur situation a changé. Une consigne qui a rendu perplexe Me Girard. « Une nouvelle demande de visa ne semble pas requise [pour ma cliente], si on se fie aux représentations d’IRCC, représentations qui se révéleront être fausses », souligne l’avocat, qui note une contradiction entre la directive envoyée par courriel et ce qui se retrouve sur le Web.

Sa cliente a finalement déposé une nouvelle demande, sans remboursement, pour un visa qui a été produit 16 jours plus tard.

Le Devoir a tenté d’obtenir des explications d’IRCC concernant l’exigence de dépôt d’une nouvelle demande. À cinq reprises, IRCC a refusé de dire quelle était sa recommandation pour les personnes sans nouvelles de leur dossier et dont la situation n’a pas changé, hormis l’impatience de l’attente. Le ministère recopiait chaque fois la procédure pour les personnes dont la situation a changé.

Manque d’informations

Ce manque de clarté cause beaucoup d’incertitude. Originaire d’Haïti, Michelet Joseph a déposé une demande de visa de visiteur en août 2021. Il fit face à un dilemme : la refaire, ou pas ? « Je n’ai pas envie de retirer ma demande sans être remboursé. Je la maintiens, mais cette dernière n’est pas traitée », laisse-t-il tomber.

IRCC souligne qu’« il n’y a pas de garantie de remboursement » si une nouvelle demande est déposée.

Celui qui travaille comme journaliste à Port-au-Prince, où « il gagne très bien sa vie », souhaite venir au Canada pour rencontrer des artistes de son pays qui se produisent en terre canadienne. « J’ai besoin de les connaître pour pouvoir parler d’eux, dit-il. J’hésite à renvoyer une demande parce que j’ai déjà soumis plein de documents et je ne sais pas s’ils les reçoivent ou s’ils les mettent de côté. C’est frustrant. »

« Je ne sais pas quoi faire », indique également Natasha, qui préfère témoigner sous un nom d’emprunt par crainte de répercussions sur son propre dossier d’immigration. « Si je dépose une nouvelle demande, est-ce qu’on va l’abandonner de nouveau et encore nous dire les mêmes choses ? »

L’étudiante haïtienne à Montréal tente de faire venir sa mère (qui vit toujours en Haïti, mais qui est une habituée des voyages au Canada) pour sa cérémonie de collation des grades au mois d’août. Le Devoir a confirmé que la demande de visa a été enregistrée avec un an d’avance, le 27 août 2021, mais Natasha n’a eu aucune nouvelle du dossier depuis 11 mois. Les délais de traitement pour un visa demandé depuis Haïti sont pourtant estimés à 91 jours, selon le site Web d’IRCC.

« L’information, honnêtement, n’est pas claire du tout. Personne n’est joignable », témoigne celle qui ignore toujours si elle doit ou non déposer une nouvelle demande pour la visite de sa mère.

Petite histoire d’une file d’attente

Trois sources diplomatiques contactées séparément ont confirmé que l’arriéré des demandes de visa pose un problème aux ambassades canadiennes. Deux d’entre elles affirment que des responsables d’IRCC, le ministère qui gère de manière autonome les dossiers d’immigration, leur ont carrément fait savoir que les demandes déposées avant le 7 septembre 2021 ne seraient jamais traitées.

Officiellement, le ministère dit continuer à examiner ces vieilles demandes. Mais par la même occasion, il présente un portrait peu rassurant pour ceux qui attendent leur visa depuis près d’un an.

D’abord, le ministère a suspendu le traitement des demandes non urgentes entre avril et juillet 2020, tout en permettant le dépôt de dossiers. « Ceux qui ont demandé à voyager au Canada pour des raisons non essentielles pendant cette période ont vu leur demande placée dans la file d’attente », explique la porte-parole d’IRCC, Julie Lafortune.

Ensuite, et durant les 14 mois qui ont suivi, les fonctionnaires ont traité principalement les demandes de visiteurs exemptés des restrictions de voyage. « Un arriéré de demandes de visa de visiteur s’est accumulé », admet sans détour un document du ministère.

Finalement, lorsque les restrictions de voyage ont été assouplies, le 7 septembre 2021, IRCC a décidé que les demandes déposées avant cette date tomberaient dans cette malheureuse « file d’attente », qui a pour caractéristique d’imposer un traitement beaucoup plus lent. Le ministère invoque la « complexité » des dossiers, comme des documents périmés ou l’évolution des circonstances.

IRCC soutient par ailleurs toujours suivre un modèle du « premier entré, premier sorti », soit le traitement des plus vieilles demandes de la file d’attente avant les plus récentes ; le ministère se permet toutefois de traiter d’abord des dossiers moins complexes.

Seulement en 2021, près de 250 000 demandes qu’IRCC n’est pas arrivé à traiter se sont ajoutées à la file. La majorité des demandes déposées en 2022 ont, elles, été traitées.

Source: Que se passe-t-il avec les demandes de visa pour le Canada?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

‘A specific form of anti-Black racism:’ Scholars want Canadian apology for slavery

2022/08/02 Leave a comment

Not unexpected given the growing number of apologies. But as Senator Bernard notes “apology is empty without action.”

The federal government has shifted resources and initiatives towards anti-black racism, both inside and outside government, as have some provinces and parts of the business sector (e.g., BlackNorth Initiative). Legitimate to press for more and faster, based upon an assessment of which approaches are likely to be more effective:

More than a year after Canada proclaimed Aug. 1 as Emancipation Day, Black leaders and scholars are renewing their calls for Ottawa to make a formal apology for the country’s history of slavery and its intergenerational harms.

Author Elise Harding-Davis said Sunday that the federal government’s vote last March to recognize Emancipation Day shows Canadian leaders know that the country’s history of slavery has caused generations of harm to Black people.

To ignore years of calls for a proper apology is “shameful,” she said.

“An apology would mean recognition of the fact that we were enslaved in this country,” Harding-Davis said in an interview. “It would also be an amelioration of the harsh treatment Black people have received and the validation that we have honestly contributed not only to this country, but to the making of this country.”

Emancipation Day recognizes the day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act came into force, thus ending slavery in most British colonies including Canada, and freeing over 800,000 people. Thousands of slaves from Africa were brought against their will to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, as well as to Lower Canada and Upper Canada, which is now Ontario.

In the colony of New France — which became British territory in the 1760s — the majority of slaves were Indigenous, historians say.

The Slavery Abolition Act freed all enslaved people, including Indigenous people, Harding-Davis said, adding: “A determination to free Black people helped free all people, and that’s huge.”

She said she doesn’t feel most Canadians are even aware of the country’s history of slavery.

“It’s just been sidelined and brushed under the rug as much as possible,” she said. “This anti-racism movement that has happened … in the last10 years, but more focused since George Floyd’s death in the United States, has only highlighted that there’s a small awareness that there’s anything wrong with the treatment of Black people in Canada.”

Dalhousie University history professor Afua Cooper said Sunday that she first asked Ottawa in 2007 to apologize for slavery and its harms. The principal investigator for the Black People’s History of Canada project noted that in the meantime, other groups have received apologies for historical harms.

“There can’t be any other explanation except that this is a specific form of anti-Black racism,” Cooper said in an interview. “Black people are not seen as fully-fledged citizens and it’s the federal government’s way of saying, ‘Too bad.'”

Some will argue that an apology isn’t warranted, she said, since Canada was formed in 1867, more than three decades after slavery ended. But Cooper said that reasoning doesn’t hold up, adding that the country formed in 1867 was built from what it was in the years before.

“And OK, how about apologizing to the Black community for things that happened after 1967?” she asked, pointing to examples including segregation, and a 1911 proposal in government that sought to ban Black immigrants from entering the country.

The last segregated school in Canada — in Lincolnville, N.S. — didn’t close until 1983.

Harding-Davis also doesn’t buy that argument. Black people have been subject to marginalization because of laws and practices that allowed and came from slavery, she said.

“The mindset, the beliefs have been left in place,” she said. “We continue to face prejudice and discrimination and longtime disparities, and the government has really done little to nothing to change that.”

Nova Scotia Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard said Sunday that it is “absolutely” time for a federal apology for the country’s practice of enslaving Black people and its lasting harms, but she said an apology is empty without action.

The question she is asking Canada after last year’s recognition of Emancipation Day is, “What’s next?”

“There’s such a significant need for education, there is such a significant need for us to create greater awareness, but there’s also a need for us to engage in actions,” she said in an interview.

“We really need more engagement from everyone to move forward to walk this path in a more positive way. We need allies to be more impactful, more committed as they go forward, and not just performing allyship.”

The federal Department of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion did not immediately provide a comment upon request.

Source: ‘A specific form of anti-Black racism:’ Scholars want Canadian apology for slavery

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Visa denials denounced at Montreal AIDS conference, federal minister cancels speech

2022/08/02 Leave a comment

Of note. Wonder whether the organizing committee (and the Canadian government when agreeing to host it) foresaw the visa difficulties and the extent to which other international conferences in Canada have encountered similar visa issues or not:

The International AIDS Society will re-evaluate how it organizes international conferences as a result of visa denials by the Canadian government, the organization’s president said Friday in Montreal.

The comments came as International Development Minister cancelled a planned appearance at the conference.

Adeeba Kamarulzaman told attendees at the opening ceremony of the AIDS 2022 conference that she is “deeply upset by the high number of denials and pending visas that prevented many registered delegates, including IAS staff and leadership, from entering Canada.”

She said the International AIDS Society, the association of HIV/AIDS professionals that organizes the conference, wants to ensure its conferences include the communities most affected by HIV.

“We know that underlying the difficulty experienced by many attendees of AIDS 2022 to enter Canada, lies a broader problem of global inequity and systemic racism that significantly impacts global health,” she said. “HIV, in particular, has always disproportionately affected the most marginalized.”

Other speakers had strong criticism for Canada’s visa policies. Activist and writer Tim McCaskill told attendees that if countries like Canada aren’t up to allowing “all stakeholders” to attend, “then we need to hold these conference in places that are.”

At one point during the opening ceremony, a group of protesters took the stage, condemning the visa denials and inequalities in the global response to HIV. “No more AIDS conferences in racist countries,” one woman said as she made a short speech.

Sajjan had been scheduled to speak at the conference opening, but he cancelled and was not replaced by another Canadian government representative.

Sajjan’s office said “operational issues” prevented him from attending. “We remain steadfast supporters of UNAIDS, the Global Fund and our trusted partners,” Haley Hodgson, a spokeswoman for the minister, said in an email.

Omar Sharif Jr., the master of ceremonies of the opening event, said Sajjan had notified organizers of the cancellation “a short while ago,” drawing boos from the crowd.

Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, said she was “sad the government of Canada isn’t here.”

In her speech, she called for a more just world, where everyone has access to quality health care and where those living with HIV don’t face stigma, “including a world where people from the global south are not denied entry into wealthy countries to bring their expertise,” she added.

The conference, which draws researchers, medical practitioners, activists and people living with HIV, focuses both on scientific progress in the fight against AIDS and the need for increased funding for HIV response.

UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, has said that millions of lives are at risk due to disruptions in HIV care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and declining funding for HIV response.

“As new infections are rising in many regions and access to treatment is slowing, how can it be right also that funding is declining?” Byanyima said to reporters earlier on Friday.

One of the messages of the conference is that if treatment has rendered the viral load undetectable, the virus is no longer transmissible.

That applies both to sexual partners and to pregnant HIV-positive women who could pass the virus on to children, said Maurine Murenga, the director of the Lean on Me Foundation. Her Kenyan organization works with adolescent girls and young women living with HIV or affected by tuberculosis.

“When I was diagnosed with HIV 20 years ago, I was given six months to live because there was no treatment. I didn’t know I would live long enough to come to a point where people living with HIV, on effective treatment, cannot pass HIV to our partners,” she told reporters.

The conference runs through Tuesday, and more than 9,000 delegates are expected to attend in person, with another 2,000 registered to participate remotely.

Source: Visa denials denounced at Montreal AIDS conference, federal minister cancels speech

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Noël: Quand les gouvernements trébuchent [call for policy and program modestly]

2022/08/02 Leave a comment

Echoes the calls by others but nevertheless important.

Money quote: “le gouvernement fédéral devrait probablement modérer ses ambitions dans ses propres sphères de compétence, en adoptant des objectifs plus réalistes en immigration par exemple, afin d’éviter les échecs récurrents de gestion.”

Je n’étais pas en avance, c’est vrai, mais au début juillet, tard en soirée, je faisais des réservations pour un séjour de camping à Terre-Neuve et en Nouvelle-Écosse. Les réservations pour le traversier entre les deux provinces, opéré par Marine Atlantique, une société d’État fédérale, se sont avérées plutôt simples, tout comme celles pour des parcs provinciaux dans chaque province. Mais pour réserver des sites au parc national du Gros-Morne et à celui des Hautes-Terres-du-Cap-Breton, c’était un peu plus stressant. Avant de pouvoir réserver, il fallait créer une « CléGC (Service de gestion des justificatifs du gouvernement du Canada) », avec un nom d’utilisateur (toutes les variantes de mon nom ont été refusées), un mot de passe, et des réponses à une panoplie de questions. Pas un obstacle majeur, mais un processus un peu lourd pour une si petite tâche. À Ottawa, les missions les plus simples semblent souvent devenir complexes.

Tout ne va pas mal au Canada. Une étude parue à la fin juin dans le Canadian Medical Association Journal montre que, pour les deux premières années de la pandémie, le pays s’est classé parmi les meilleurs pour le nombre de cas, le taux de vaccination et la mortalité excédentaire, avec un bilan économique somme toute satisfaisant. Au Canada, ce sont les provinces atlantiques et le Québec qui ont connu les plus faibles taux de mortalité excédentaire.

Mais quelque part sur l’interminable voie de sortie de la pandémie, le bilan du gouvernement fédéral s’est détérioré. Cafouillage dans l’émission des visas et des passeports, congestion dans les aéroports, délais inacceptables à l’assurance-emploi, accueil difficile des réfugiés, traitement déficient des dossiers d’immigration, les échecs semblent s’accumuler.

Tout ne va pas nécessairement mieux dans les provinces. Il y a même des domaines où les ratés sont habituels, voire pérennes. La gestion des soins de santé constitue un cas patent. Mais dans ce cas, c’est largement une question de ressources. En 2019-2020, les soins de santé représentaient 41,4 % des dépenses de portefeuilles des provinces, comparativement à 31 % en 1981-1982. La même année, la contribution fédérale, par le biais du Transfert canadien en matière de santé, était tombée à 22,4 %. Si les provinces ne font pas mieux en santé, c’est largement parce que d’une année à l’autre elles doivent faire plus avec moins.

Dans d’autres domaines, comme en environnement, il s’agit plus clairement d’un manque de volonté politique. Si le ministre de l’Environnement du Québec « avait les convictions, la volonté, le courage et l’autorité morale nécessaires pour relever le défi de l’urgence climatique », écrivait récemment le chroniqueur Michel David, François Legault ne l’aurait pas choisi pour ce poste.

Mais émettre des visas et des passeports, acheminer des prestations d’assurance-emploi, traiter des demandes à l’immigration ? Le gouvernement fédéral a sûrement les ressources pour accomplir ces tâches et il devrait même être capable de marquer des points dans des secteurs qu’il contrôle depuis toujours, qui sont visibles et significatifs pour les citoyens et ne demandent pas des ressources faramineuses. « Il ne fallait pas être un génie », déplorait récemment l’ancien greffier du Bureau du Conseil privé Paul Tellier, « pour prédire qu’il y aurait une hausse des demandes de passeport » au sortir de la pandémie.

M. Tellier attribue les difficultés du gouvernement Trudeau à la centralisation excessive de la gestion autour du premier ministre et à la méfiance qui en découle entre élus et fonctionnaires. D’autres auteurs blâment le jeu politique, qui amène les élus à négliger les conseils et les actions des fonctionnaires.

Plus plausible, à mon avis, est le constat de l’ancien haut fonctionnaire Ralph Heintzman selon lequel le gouvernement fédéral se désintéresse des services aux citoyens depuis au moins trente ans. Dans la fonction publique fédérale, le prestige est associé aux conseils et à la stratégie, pas à la gestion compétente des programmes en place. Une carrière ascendante se caractérise par des sauts rapides d’un ministère à l’autre, pour appliquer à des niveaux supérieurs des méthodes de gestion largement indifférenciées. Consacrer trop d’années à maîtriser un domaine d’intervention gouvernementale semble manifester un manque d’ambition. Les hauts fonctionnaires voient ainsi les choses de haut. Quant aux élus, ils préfèrent annoncer des programmes plutôt que de veiller à leur bon cheminement.

Mais pourquoi ces travers semblent-ils plus prononcés à Ottawa ? Pour le comprendre, il faut considérer le fonctionnement de la fédération canadienne. Un rapport récent de l’Institut sur la gouvernance rapporte les propos d’un haut fonctionnaire qui note que « nous ne sommes pas un pays cohésif. Nous sommes une grande fédération ». On pourrait interpréter ce constat comme un appel de plus à davantage de collaboration entre les ordres de gouvernement. Mais il semble plus juste d’y voir une caractéristique structurelle, une condition d’existence du Canada.

La figure 1 ci-dessous montre bien pourquoi la gestion quotidienne de services aux citoyens n’est pas le fort du gouvernement fédéral.

Figure 1 : Dépenses du gouvernement fédéral et du gouvernement du Québec, 2021Sources : Comptes publics du Canada ; Comptes publics du Québec

Le gouvernement fédéral est un animal particulier, plus habitué à émettre des transferts aux individus, aux entreprises et aux gouvernements, et à énoncer des normes associées à ces transferts, qu’à livrer des services à la population. L’année 2021 exagère un peu le trait, puisque la pandémie a engendré son lot de transferts exceptionnels. Mais la logique générale ne change pas. Il y a plus de vingt ans, le rapport de la Commission sur le déséquilibre fiscal faisait état de proportions assez semblables.

Les difficultés actuelles du gouvernement Trudeau ne sont donc pas si exceptionnelles. Le gouvernement fédéral demeure principalement une machine à récolter et à distribuer des ressources fiscales et il a tendance à se perdre quand il s’agit de gérer des programmes concrets.

La solution réside donc moins dans une réforme additionnelle de la fonction publique fédérale que dans une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement de la fédération. En premier lieu, il faudrait améliorer l’équilibre fiscal en laissant davantage de ressources propres aux gouvernements provinciaux, dont la tâche principale consiste justement à livrer des services à la population.

Ensuite, pour des raisons évidentes, il conviendrait de prendre avec un grain de sel les volontés de leadership fédérales sur des questions de compétence provinciale. Notant dans une formulation bien à lui qu’en santé « ce n’est pas juste pitcher de l’argent vers le problème qui va le résoudre », M. Trudeau invitait récemment les provinces à des « conversations » afin de réduire les délais d’attente. Compte tenu de l’état de ses services, il devrait se garder une petite gêne.

En fait, le gouvernement fédéral devrait probablement modérer ses ambitions dans ses propres sphères de compétence, en adoptant des objectifs plus réalistes en immigration par exemple, afin d’éviter les échecs récurrents de gestion.

Mais les difficultés actuelles ne sont pas nouvelles, et elles ne se résorberont pas facilement.

Source: Quand les gouvernements trébuchent

Filed under Government, Immigration, Passports Tagged with , , , ,

Photos That Helped to Document the Holocaust Were Taken by a Nazi

2022/08/01 Leave a comment

Of interest, and the importance of what is “outside the frame” and context to understanding these and other photographs:

On June 20, 1943, bewildered and terrified families, laden with baggage and branded with yellow stars, were forced into Olympiaplein, one of this city’s most recognizable public squares. Few knew where they were going, or for how long, so they wore their winter coats despite the blazing sun as they registered with the Nazi authorities.

A Dutch photographer, Herman Heukels, moved through the crowd, taking pictures of people who would soon be deported to concentration camps. His images would be the final portraits of many of these people, who were among 5,500 sent that day from Amsterdam to Westerbork transit camp, and then on to “the east.” The vast majority would never return.

Heukels’s photos are some of the strongest visual evidence used by historians to illustrate the Holocaust in the Netherlands, which took the lives of more than 102,000 of the estimated 140,000 Jewish civilians who lived in the country before World War II.

Yet despite their ubiquity in books and films, few people outside of scholarly circles know that these images were actually taken by a Dutch Nazi. He intended to depict Jews in a demeaning light. Instead, he ended up paying stark witness to the atrocities of the Third Reich.

“These are very famous photos, some of the most requested photos in our archive from across the whole world,” said René Kok, a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. The institute holds an archive of about 30 original Heukels photos from the Dutch Ministry of Justice, which confiscated them as part of his postwar collaboration trial.

In recent months, a deeper sense of Heukels’s beliefs and motivations has emerged from a biography published in Dutch this spring that reveals how an ordinary young man from Zwolle became radicalized as a member of the Dutch Nazi party. The book, by Machlien Vlasblom, a Dutch World War II historian, provides new insights into how Heukels betrayed Jewish people from his town, looted their businesses and property, and recorded their history as a press photographer for the Dutch S.S.

“He captured them at their weakest moments,” Vlasblom said in an interview, “and the way he acted there was rude and brutal. Of course, he put the Nazi ideology into these images.”

How does this new information change the way we might look at these photos? Or how historians might use them, or contextualize them in the future?

The photos are “quite exceptional,” said a NIOD researcher, Kees Ribbens, a professor of Popular Historical Culture and Mass Violence at Erasmus University Rotterdam, because they “show the Holocaust taking place in a very well-known place in the center of Amsterdam. They show how the whole bureaucracy of deportation worked.”

Yet, these are “not innocent images,” said the Amsterdam-based Israeli artist Ram Katzir, who recently used one of Heukels’s pictures as the foundation for a memorial he created for the site of deportations. The artwork, “Shadows,” unveiled on the 79th anniversary of the raid in June, reproduced the shadows of the deportees from the photos, in the exact locations on Olympiaplein where they were last documented alive.

“We had no names of any of the victims,” said Katzir, so he deliberated a lot about whether to include Heukels’s name on the information plaque. In the end, he decided to do so. “It’s a double-edged image; and if you hide that, you hide the role of the collaborator.”

Katzir added, “When you look at the information plaque, you’re standing exactly where the photographer stood.”

In fact, a majority of the surviving images of Jewish persecution in the Netherlands were “made from the point of view of the persecutor,” Ribbens said. These include those by Bart de Kok, a member of the Dutch Nazi Party, known as N.S.B., and a German press photographer, Franz Anton Stapf, who captured some of the last images of Amsterdam’s Jewish community before it was decimated.

Janina Struk, author of the 2005 book “Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence,” said that in the postwar period, photos taken by bystanders, perpetrators and victims were “all kind of mixed together,” and hardly anyone asked who had shot the photos or for what purposes.

“Until quite recently, historians have not really been so concerned about who took the pictures, and why they took them and what they were for,” she said. “It’s been rather historians using pictures as illustrations of a text, rather than being a text themselves.”

In recent years, she added, there has been a greater emphasis on contextualizing the images, explaining how they were made, so that viewers have a better understanding of what they’re looking at — and so people can make better ethical choices about how to present them.

Ribbens said that in learning that Heukels’s aim was to publish his photos in Storm S.S., a Dutch Nazi propaganda weekly (they were never published there), we can think about what he chose to leave out of the frame. In his series, he said, we don’t see the Nazi officials or the Dutch police who were forcibly rounding up civilians.

It doesn’t automatically raise the question: Who organized this, who is responsible for this persecution?” he said. “People show up, and it’s not clear what kind of stress they’re under, why they’re sent here, what choice did they have in leaving their homes, why they didn’t find a hiding place? What was so threatening about it?”

The official policy of the German occupiers was that no images of Jewish people could be published in the “legal” Dutch press, explained NIOD researcher and photography expert Erik Somers. Propaganda newspapers, however, could print such images alongside articles with expressly antisemitic content.

As a result, a high proportion of Holocaust images, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, were taken by Nazi-endorsed propaganda photographers who had explicit permission to carry cameras, Struk said. Other images came from German soldiers who specifically sought out “souvenir” images of Jews who they thought fit a physical stereotype.

“We know that the Germans used photography as a weapon, and they invested a great deal in propaganda photography,” said Sheryl Silver Ochayon, program director for Echoes & Reflections, an educational arm of Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel.

“Photographs never killed anyone,” she added, “but what photographs can do is they can justify an ideology. If you present your victims as low or passive, or like vermin, you can justify a genocidal plan of action, as the Germans did.”

Vlasblom began her research when a friend from church, Gerard Visser, asked her to look at a box of family letters he had inherited. Although he knew the papers concerned his two great-uncles, Herman Heukels and Jan Heukels, who was also a Nazi collaborator, he said in an interview, “I didn’t really know the family structure, so I didn’t know who sent what to whom or why.”

Not everyone in Visser’s family is pleased that Vlasblom’s book, “We waren supermannen (We Were Supermen),” which also includes information about Jan Heukels, called attention to these two ancestors who were collaborators.

“You hear all the heroic resistance stories from Holland,” Visser said, “but there are people like the Heukels, who really did bad things. I felt that part of a country’s history should also be told.”

Does knowing more about Herman Heukels’s personal biography imply that historians should use these photographs in a different way — or even use them less often?

Somers from the NIOD, the Dutch archive, said these images continue to be a valuable historical source, but the Heukelses’ story underscores the importance of providing context to pictures.

“You have to find out from the beginning the elements of those photos,” he said, “who made the photo and for what purpose, and in what context?”

Struk added, “We need to move away from the idea that a photograph is just a window on the world. It isn’t. It’s a very edited version of what the photographer chose to photograph.”

Source: Photos That Helped to Document the Holocaust Were Taken by a Nazi

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Saskatchewan seeks the same autonomy on immigration that Quebec already enjoys

2022/08/01 Leave a comment

More ambitious than Ontario’s demands (largely focussed on expanded Provincial Nominee Program numbers) and accordingly unlikely to be met given immigration is shared jurisdiction and Quebec’s situation is different than other provinces.

But the interesting political twist is the reference by the Minister Harrison to backlogs: “By transferring selection of all immigrants to our province, including in the family class, the federal government can focus on addressing the outrageous processing times for admissions that are causing such issues for hundreds of thousands of potential new Canadians.”

Saskatchewan is pushing for Quebec-style autonomy over immigration with its Saskatchewan Immigration Accord.

Jeremy Harrison, the province’s Immigration and Career Training minister, met with federal and provincial immigration ministers earlier this week to put forward “a detailed proposal” that would give Saskatchewan similar authority over immigration that has already been guaranteed to Quebec.

The province announced Thursday that the accord would give Saskatchewan “sole authority” to nominate newcomers moving to the province, including control over the family class of immigration.

The plan includes “a transfer of federal resources for settlement services to the Province of Saskatchewan” and a guaranteed provincial allocation of nominees each year that would be proportionate to the population of Saskatchewan within Canada.

“Saskatchewan requires more autonomy and flexibility over immigration in order to meet its economic needs and address gaps in the labour market,” Harrison said in a news release Friday.

“Canada should be focusing its efforts on reducing processing times for applications and let the provinces select immigrants and ensure their effective settlement.”

The Quebec Accord grants that province the sole responsibility for the selection of economic immigrants, while Canada bears responsibility for admission based on national security.

While Quebec manages economic immigration to the province — a power other provinces and territories in Canada do not have — the federal government is responsible for family reunification and the admission of refugees, which represents close to half of newcomers to Saskatchewan every year.

“When it comes to immigration Saskatchewan expects the same deal as Quebec. Immigration is a key component of our government’s plan to grow the province to 1.4 million people and create an additional 100,000 jobs by 2030,” Harrison said.

“Provincial governments are in the best position to respond to local labour market needs with new Canadians. The provinces should not be limited by economic categories or caps on provincial nominee programs set by the federal government.”

Speaking to journalists about health-care staff shortages, NDP Leader Carla Beck said immigration could be a part of the solution.

“They seem to want to emulate Quebec. We want to have very clear criteria. I don’t think this is something that should be hidden from the people of Saskatchewan,” Beck said.

“That criteria should be fair to people who are looking to relocate here to Saskatchewan. It’s on any government to show that our immigration system is fair and doesn’t doesn’t contain any discrimination.”

The government expects to exceed its current cap of 6,000 under the Saskatchewan immigrant nominee program this year, and seeks a proportionate share of national immigration at a “minimum 13,000 positions allocated to the province in 2022.”

The transfer in settlement funding, according to the release, would translate to approximately $42 million transferred to the province annually.

“As Canada’s longest serving Immigration Minister, I have long maintained that the transfer of these authorities makes sense from the perspective of the provincial and federal government – and most significantly – for new immigrants coming to Saskatchewan,” Harrison wrote.

“Simply put — we know our province’s needs and labour markets better than the Government of Canada. By transferring selection of all immigrants to our province, including in the family class, the federal government can focus on addressing the outrageous processing times for admissions that are causing such issues for hundreds of thousands of potential new Canadians.”

Source: Saskatchewan seeks the same autonomy on immigration that Quebec already enjoys

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Organ donations remain a hard sell among some groups

2022/08/01 Leave a comment

Of note. Wonder whether this changes for the second generation:

Religions, beliefs, culture, and even local history influence what Canadians — especially immigrants — think should happen to the body after death. These beliefs and traditions surrounding death could impact medical research opportunities. 

In Ontario, medical schools depend on donated bodies to train future medical professionals. ‘Body donation’ involves a whole body given to schools of anatomy for educational and research purposes.

Western University in London, Ont., is among the Canadian universities feeling the impacts of a lack of body donations, reporting that cadaver availability is down by 20 per cent during the COVID pandemic. Medical schools have been scrambling for bodies and even resorting to synthetic alternatives to continue their studies. 

Low supply

Although cadaveric whole-body donations are of utmost importance for medical education, the number of persons who choose to donate bodies remains low.  Organ donors, on the other hand, have more willing participants. According to a survey conducted by Ipsos Reid, 81  per cent of Canadian respondents are willing to donate their organs after death. Although most are willing and support the idea, the survey found that only 54 per cent actually carry documentation that indicates their consent to organ donation and 39 per cent have not discussed with their families their wishes when it comes to organ donation. 

Immigrants in Canada mostly stay clear of whole-body donations, and their numbers hardly make a dent in body supplies. Most of them owe allegiance to their faiths, religious practices and culture which do not encourage body donations.

According to 2017 study, families of immigrants in Ontario are less likely to provide consent for organ donation compared with families of longterm residents (46.4 per cent versus 68.8 per cent). Another study shows that immigrants were much less likely to register for deceased organ and tissue donation in Ontario (11.9 per cent versus 26.5 per cent). The largest numbers of unregistered immigrants were from India, China and the Philippines.

Respect for dead bodies manifests itself in diverse ways in different cultures. According to Nazira Tareen, a prominent community builder and spiritual caregiver of Ottawa’s Muslim community, Muslims do not donate bodies for religious reasons.  

“[The] Quran wants bodies to be interred as soon as possible after death. Islam forbids defilement of the body whether by dissection, removal of tissues or organs. A dead body deserves dignity with a timely burial,” said Tareen.

“We pay spiritual importance to an ‘intact’ body by following the standard practices of shrouding the body with five yards of white cloth and a coffin,” according to Tareen.

Table above shows that families of immigrants were less likely to provide consent compared with families of long-term residents (46.4% [135 of 291] vs 68.8% [1777 of 2582]). It also showcases the number of immigrant families who provided consent to organ donation by region of birth. Table made by Daphné Dossios with data found on Familial Consent for Deceased Organ Donation Among Immigrants and Long-term Residents in Ontario, Canada: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study

Another study with interviews and focus groups about Chinese Canadian beliefs toward organ donation found that among its participants, religion or spiritual beliefs, a lack of knowledge about donation, and generational impressions of organ donation were factors that influenced decisions on organ donation after death. The study notably found that values and beliefs about keeping a body intact after death is a major barrier to organ donation.

“There’s a saying in Chinese that in order to rest in peace, one needs to have everything intact in the body after one is dead. So if you take away something and then it’s considered to be something missing after death, then the person would not enjoy good after death or after life”, explains a participant of Chinese descent, interviewed for the study.

A similar study among Indo-Canadians in British Columbia also found religion and beliefs about dying and death could influence decision-making in organ donation. The study also highlights that Indo-Canadians have little information and are not familiar with the B.C. system of registering as an organ donor, which could constitute a hurdle. According to some participants, language could possibly be another barrier, as presentations about organ donation in B.C. are not provided in Hindi.

Vijay Dhavale, an Indian-born Canadian — who is a four-time recipient of two prestigious Government medals — chose to donate his parents’ bodies to medical colleges (in 2006 and 2009) and also donated his wife’s body in 2019.

Dhavale, who has been in Canada for 49 years and is currently based in Ottawa, is a Hindu. 

“My family believed in being useful even after death. In my will, I have asked that my body be donated for learning purposes.”

Dhavale said his decision to go for body donations was influenced by the example of Sage Dadhchi (a figure in Hinduism) who willingly gave up his life so that Lord Brahma (God of creation in Hinduism) could fashion weapons from his bones to defeat the demons. “In death, I am celebrating life, I want my body to be useful too like the Sage’s.”

In Canada, another challenge often faced by bereaved immigrants is the choice to inter the deceased in the host country or repatriate the remains for burial in the country of origin. Most often parents of immigrant students ask that the bodies are returned to the mother country so that they can conduct the last rites.

Impacting medical education 

The dearth of cadavers is causing a disturbing deficiency directly impacting the quality of medical education in Canada. Practicing on cadavers helps with the sensory modalities — the touch, the feel, the perception of depth.  “Students can listen to theories about the structure of the heart, see pictures of the structure, but it’s not until they hold the heart in their palm that they can really appreciate it,”  according to an anatomy professor at Queen’s University, Dr. Leslie Mackenzie. Queen’s University in Kingston, which actively runs donor campaigns and educates the public, receives 20 to 40 body donations every year. 

The University of British Columbia (UBC) on its website states that more than 1,000 students every year in different medical programs are trained in anatomy using cadavers. During pre-pandemic times, UBC received 80 to 120 human cadaver donations a year, “but programs now receive 50 per cent of that number,” observed Dr. Olusegun Oyedele, associate professor of teaching in the UBC department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences. 

In Canada, bodies can be donated by bequeathing the body to universities across the country. Haley Linklater who oversees the body bequeathal program at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, Ont., confirmed in an email the urgent need for bodies. 

“The University is currently accepting new donors,” Linklater wrote, “We need 100 or more every year to be able to assist in all of our teaching and to contribute to research, but we get a few less than that, usually 75 to 85.” 

Linklater isn’t sure what to attribute to the drop in body donations except for the fear of infection during the pandemic period. In many cases, she found the bereaved relatives desired to have the body available for conducting a traditional rite, and hence they held back on body donations. According to Linklater. In 2021 and 2022 thus far, “we’ve only had 60 to 65 donors.” 

In face of this cadaver shortage, some medical schools are using high-tech mannequins, computer software and digital simulators as an alternative. In 2018 for example, Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Waterloo, Ont., received two full-sized, multi-functional synthetic human models from SynDaver making WLU the first institution in Canada to possess two full-body synthetic humans. As one can read on the company website, “the tissues are [even] a better representation of live tissue than the dead tissue of a cadaver.”

Source: Organ donations remain a hard sell among some groups

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