Curry: Permanent residents pay taxes but can’t vote

2022/06/21 Leave a comment

While Don and I disagree on municipal voting rights, he makes the case (given Canada’s relatively easy approach to citizenship, better to focus on all voting rights through citizenship). As municipalities are creations of provincial governments, the latter’s agreement would be required:

How would you like it if you paid your municipal and school taxes every year, your kids are in school, but you can’t vote for city council or the school board?

Hundreds of people in North Bay are in that situation.

They are permanent residents of Canada but are not entitled to vote because they are not yet Canadian citizens. If they would be any more motivated than the dismal 43 per cent of voters who bothered to cast a ballot in the recent Ontario election is beside the point. They don’t have the right to vote.

To become a citizen, you have to have lived in Canada for at least three of the past five years, with your time as a temporary resident only eligible for a half-day for every full day you were here. The government processing fee is $530 and the right of citizenship fee is $100.

You have to have filed taxes for each year you were in Canada, pass a citizenship test, which most Canadians would likely fail, and prove your language skills in either English or French.

The Liberal federal government said in the 2021 election campaign that it will eliminate citizenship fees. It said the same thing in the 2019 campaign, and the fees remain in place.

There are other obstacles. The paperwork is daunting to many.

One client I had speaks English as his first language and works in a professional occupation. He asked me to do the paperwork.

Others say becoming a Canadian citizen could jeopardize travel to their home country to visit relatives because dual citizenship is not recognized.

The Ontario government controls municipalities and all indications are that it has no plan to eliminate the citizenship requirement for municipal and school board elections. This is despite the fact that some municipalities, including North Bay, Toronto, and Waterloo in Ontario, plus Vancouver, Halifax, and others, have voted to allow permanent residents voting rights.

New Brunswick is set to allow permanent residents to vote in the next municipal elections, scheduled for 2026.

North Bay City Council went on the record in support of a motion on May 11, 2015, after a presentation I gave in support of the concept. As I recall, voting against were Tanya Vrebosch and Mark King, and the motion passed easily.

That endorsement has earned the city positive press across Canada, as other cities are urged to support the movement. However, when I visit city hall I see no diversity whatsoever among the staff, and there is none at the city council level. Clearly, there is more to be done to make the city a welcoming place for newcomers.

There are dissenting views, of course. They centre on the argument that this will devalue Canadian citizenship. My response is that people should have the right to vote municipally, as it is the government closest to the people and who gets elected is important. Retain citizenship as a requirement for provincial and federal elections.

Take the announcement recently by MP Anthony Rota that the federal government will contribute almost $26 million to the arena project at the Omischl complex. It was wonderful to hear.

But, if we had more diversity at city hall and on the city council, and permanent residents could vote, the conversation might include a desire for more soccer fields and cricket pitches as well. When you don’t have diversity in decision-making, which includes voting, you keep doing everything the way you have always done it.

Myer Siemiatycki, professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University, where my granddaughter begins studies in September, (if you haven’t heard of it, it’s the new name for Ryerson), says there are more than 50 countries that allow non-citizens the right to vote.

So, it’s not a novel concept. Other countries are way ahead of us.

He told the CBC recently that changes are long overdue, because there’s currently a “ludicrous” double standard where people who own property in Toronto but live elsewhere can vote, while permanent residents actually living in the city can’t.

In the U.S., non-citizens can vote municipally in many cities. New York recently came on board and Boston may be next. Near Boston, Cambridge and Amherst have extended the ability to vote.

Good on North Bay City Council for being an early adopter of a motion to extend municipal voting rights. The barrier is the Conservative government of Doug Ford.

Perhaps our MPP, Vic Fedeli, could bend his ear on the topic.

Source: Opinion: Permanent residents pay taxes but can’t vote

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

En ligne avec Kafka

2022/06/21 Leave a comment

More harsh commentary on the passport wait times:

L’attente et le blocage inexcusables à Service Canada témoignent de la culture de non-responsabilisation à Ottawa.

Le moins que l’on puisse dire, c’est que la très ordinaire moyenne au bâton de Service Canada ne s’améliore pas. L’agence gouvernementale a déjà été passablement sur la sellette cette année avec des reports inexcusables pouvant atteindre jusqu’à des mois pour certains malheureux prestataires de l’assurance-emploi. Monsieur et madame Tout-le-Monde découvrent maintenant que cette apathie a gagné jusqu’aux bureaux des passeports, ce qui menace ainsi leurs vacances tout en éprouvant solidement leur patience.

Un problème de riches, le goulot d’étranglement qui paralyse la délivrance et le renouvellement des passeports d’un océan à l’autre ? Forcément. Mais pas seulement, en ce sens qu’il vient braquer les projecteurs sur tout ce qui fait défaut au point d’accès unique, et plus largement au gouvernement Trudeau, en matière de prestation de services.

Certes, les retards et les ratés du fédéral dans la prestation de service ne sont pas exclusifs aux libéraux, mais leur extrême frilosité à intervenir auprès de la fonction publique, elle, l’est. Épinglé plus tôt cette année pour des délais éhontés sur le front de l’immigration — le ministre responsable, Sean Fraser, a lui-même qualifié ces retards d’« incroyablement frustrants » —, ce gouvernement semble au surplus incapable de voir venir les crises. Pis, même une fois qu’il a les deux pieds dedans, sa courte vue l’empêche d’en prendre la pleine mesure, et donc d’intervenir en conséquence.

Il y avait quelque chose de douloureux à écouter la ministre responsable du dossier, Karina Gould, tenter de minimiser la crise il y a encore deux semaines. Mal informée, elle s’était embrouillée dans les temps d’attente, niant même jusqu’à l’existence de pratiques douteuses pourtant largement documentées sur le terrain, comme cette fameuse règle secrète voulant que seules les demandes déposées à moins de 48 heures, voire 24 heures, du départ soient traitées dans certains bureaux.

Pressée de toutes parts, la ministre Gould a finalement admis avoir dû clarifier plusieurs points la semaine dernière. Elle a en outre annoncé une panoplie de mesures (dont l’embauche prochaine de 600 personnes, des heures de service allongées, y compris le week-end, et un outil pour évaluer les délais d’attente). De belles promesses que les fonctionnaires sur le plancher, même avec la meilleure volonté du monde, n’arrivent toujours pas à concrétiser. Car il n’y a pas que les Canadiens qui font les frais de ce ratage spectaculaire, les employés de Service Canada paient aussi le prix fort de cette absence de vision.

Sur le terrain, c’est encore la débrouille qui règne (et un peu la colère, avec des interventions policières çà et là pour faire retomber la pression). Il était pourtant écrit dans le ciel que les Canadiens se bousculeraient au portillon de Service Canada sitôt que les conditions sanitaires le permettraient. Plus de deux ans de surplace pandémique donnent la bougeotte. Nous ne sommes pas les seuls. Les Américains, les Anglais ou encore les Australiens vivent des affres similaires, a mollement argué la ministre Gould. À la différence près, qu’ici, Service Canada a sciemment mis le couvercle sur la marmite.

Pendant qu’ils rêvaient d’évasion sagement confinés à la maison, les plus prévoyants qui ont voulu profiter de l’accalmie pour renouveler leur passeport ont plutôt été découragés. On a aussi fait complètement abstraction du fait que les premiers passeports valides pour dix ans (permis depuis le 1er juillet 2013) allaient bientôt massivement arriver à leur terme. Résultat : du 1er avril 2020 au 31 mars 2021, le Canada n’a délivré que 363 000 passeports, soit 20 % de son volume habituel. Normalement, Service Canada recense 5000 appels par jour en lien avec un renouvellement de passeport. Il en recense maintenant plus de 200 000.

Ces chiffres ont artificiellement mis la table pour la débandade que l’on connaît. Et les voyageurs ne sont pas au bout de leurs peines. Contre toute logique, Ottawa n’a jamais cessé de défendre bec et ongles sa très imparfaite application ArriveCAN, source de plusieurs mécontentements chez les voyageurs qui ont eu maille à partir avec elle. Pour certains, faute d’avoir rempli le formulaire à temps, cela s’est traduit par une quarantaine forcée, même si leur vaccination était en règle et que leur test PCR était nickel.

Disposé à jeter du lest, le gouvernement a annoncé que l’obligation pesant sur les voyageurs de fournir une preuve vaccinale contre la COVID-19 avant de monter à bord d’un avion ou d’un train au pays serait abrogée à partir lundi. La logique aurait voulu qu’ArriveCAN, dont la raison d’être est liée au statut vaccinal des voyageurs, passe à la trappe en même temps. Mais Ottawa la maintient, comprenne qui pourra.

Voilà de toute évidence un gouvernement plus attaché à dicter la norme qu’à mettre la main à la pâte pour la faire respecter. Cela dépasse largement l’anecdote. Réticent à intervenir auprès de la fonction publique, même quand celle-ci aurait besoin d’une direction plus affirmée, il cultive une culture de la non-responsabilisation dont témoigne cet épisode aussi navrant que kafkaïen.

Source: En ligne avec Kafka

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LILLEY: Trudeau government not telling the truth on passport delays

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

Good hard hitting column and yet another of all too many instances of government management failures. As others have noted if government cannot deliver services in a timely manner, it undermines overall trust as well as the government’s failed “Deliverology” approach from 2016.

And it is not as if the government was unaware of the increase. IRCC’s department plan 2022-23 states:

“Due to travel restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, passport demand was low for the majority of 2021–22. Forecasts predict that a recovery to pre-COVID-19 demand will begin in Spring of 2022, and that demand for passports will continue to increase over the next three years. This growth will be due in part to applications being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and an anticipated surge related to the renewal of the first wave of passports issued with a 10-year validity period.”

IRCC has the policy and program responsibility but Service Canada operates the public offices and the processing centres (and Global Affairs is responsible for international delivery). The disconnect between the plan and the lack of action to address the anticipated surge is striking.

Other areas of poor management can be seen in  the lack of passport data on open data since 2016, and the last Passport Canada report dating from 2017-18, with minimal data in both IRCC and ESDC departmental reports. The 2020 Evaluation Report highlights data weaknesses and unclear roles and responsibilities between the three departments involved.

On a personal note, when I worked at Service Canada 2004-7, we made a major effort to engage Passport Canada to provide application checking and verification through the Service Canada network (receiving agent). Our DM at the time was ambitious and insistent, wanting to roll the service across the network. In the end, a pilot project of three offices worked so well that Passport Canada overcame its resistance. But no appetite or discussion of delegating of authorities at that time:

The Trudeau government is once again lying to Canadians over why they can’t offer basic services, in this case passports.

The government is claiming there is a surge in applications when they are only dealing with about 55% of the volume they handled pre-pandemic.

According to the latest annual report of Passport Canada posted online, the department issued between 4.7 and 5.1 million passports per year from 2013 through 2018. That works out to a weekly average of between 90,000 to 98,000 passports.

In their statement Monday, the government said they had received 542,000 applications over the preceding 10 weeks, or an average of 54,200 applications a week and this is what is swamping the department.

“After two years of travel restrictions, Canada and many other countries around the world are seeing a significant surge in demand for passports. As is the case in many countries, the size and suddenness of this surge has created delays,” Minister Karina Gould said.

I get that this is more people than the department has seen since the pandemic started but staff should be able to handle 55% of normal volume. Instead, we’ve had months of long lines and delays.

Only an excuse

When I pushed the minister’s office on this, they presented a new excuse. Close to 80% of applications now come in via mail and about 25% of them have errors in the applications making the process longer. If the system were operating at capacity instead of just over half capacity, then I might buy this argument. But at this point it’s just another excuse to blame the public instead of a department that isn’t working properly.

One friend who applied for their child’s passport on April 2 still hasn’t seen it. Readers have written to me about waiting for more than seven months to get a passport they mailed away for.

Then there are the lines.

In Hamilton, a reader showed up just after 4 a.m. to find out they weren’t close to being the first person in line. In Victoria, the line started forming at 2 a.m. and in Prince Edward Island, they only wished they could line up at a local office instead of having to drive to Halifax or Moncton.

Truth about the lines

The people standing in lines outside of offices are doing so because they have travel booked in the next 45 days and the standard application process can’t handle them.

One gentleman I spoke to this week outside of Toronto’s downtown passport office said he had initially applied at a regular Service Canada office. After nearly completing the process, he was told his passport would go in the mail by the end of August, after his trip started. He was forced to stand in line for hours to get inside before navigating the bureaucracy to get his travel documents faster.

Canadians can normally turn to their Members of Parliament for help when they have trouble with an application or need something expedited. There’s a special line for MPs and their staff to call when helping deal with passport files.

John Brassard, the Conservative MP for Barrie-Innisfil, emailed to say his staff waited on that special line for five hours one day this week followed by an extra two hours on the line with the agent to process the files.

These problems have been going on for months and the government is only acting to deal with them now due to media and opposition pressure. It’s another example of the Trudeau government not working properly and not dealing with issues until they blow up.

Instead of wasting time trying to mislead Canadians by blaming this on a surge of applications Minister Gould should get busy whipping her department back into shape. If she can’t do that, she should resign.

Source: LILLEY: Trudeau government not telling the truth on passport delays

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Ian Mulgrew: Refugee says foreign buyers property tax discriminates

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how the court rules. Pretty wealthy refugee given the value of the property tax:
An Iranian refugee who has lived in Canada for 27 years but only recently obtained permanent resident status wants to be reimbursed for the $1.32-million foreign buyers property tax he paid for his West Vancouver home.
In a B.C. Supreme Court statement of claim filed recently, Kourosh Bakhtiari, who has been described in documents as an aspiring terrorist decades ago for convictions on weapons charges and who once escaped custody using s rope made of dental floss, maintains that a 61-month delay in granting him permanent resident status violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, causing him duress and unnecessary expense.“His case shows how the foreign buyers property surtax in part harms a group of homeowners it is intended to help — long-term residents of B.C. without formal immigration status who wish to express their roots in this territory through home ownership,” veteran Vancouver lawyer Jason Gratl said.

Bakhtiari, who has no criminal record in Canada, was initially ruled inadmissible to the country by the Immigration and Refugee Board because of his crimes in the U.S., and was issued a conditional deportation order on April 9, 1996.

But he fought that and was designated a refugee on May 27, 1998.Ten years earlier, Bakhtiari was caught attempting to buy a Manhattan apartment while impersonating a State Department employee.

His briefcase contained weapons — including a 9 mm M-11 semi-automatic pistol, a silencer for the gun, a knife, grenades, and a garrote.

He and two other inmates reportedly later escaped from New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center using a rope fashioned out of 15 packages of dental floss braided together.

While recuperating in a New York hospital after being captured, he tried unsuccessfully to flee again.

Deported to Iran after a stint in a U.S. prison, Bakhtiari came to Canada and claimed political asylum on Dec. 10, 1995, fearing torture in Iran because in 1984 his father was captured, tortured, and killed for leading a revolt against the Islamic regime.

He applied to the immigration minister for permanent resident status in 1997, but was denied due to his U.S. convictions and his failure to pay a fine. Bakhtiari wrongly assumed that the fine would be paid from seized assets.On Dec. 15, 2011, more than 100 police officers converged on five locations, including Bakhtiari’s company offices, in a dramatic raid that netted more than $220,000 and four kilograms of methamphetamine.

Nevertheless, police apologized in 2017 for “Project Enape,” which targeted Bakhtiari’s firm for manufacturing legal pharmaceuticals and male hair-growth products allegedly because it was linked to organized crime. Civil proceedings in the case resulted in the forfeiture of seized cash.

In 2014, Bakhtiari again attempted to apply for permanent resident status. This application was again refused. He applied once more in January 2017.

Bakhtiari was finally granted permanent resident status this past Feb. 16, although no explanation was given for the delay.

He alleges the process took three times longer than average and was the product of gross negligence and bad faith by the minister.

During this waiting period, Bakhtiari, on July 1, 2021, was forced to pay $1.32 million in surtax on the June 14, 2019, purchase of a home registered in his company’s name on Groveland Road  in West Vancouver. He lives there.

He appealed, but on Feb. 29 was deemed ineligible for an exemption because he had not received permanent resident status within one year of the purchase — the process had taken 32 months.

The lawsuit, filed by Bakhtiari and his firm, Technocorp Venture Capital Inc., alleges the tax not only imposes an enormous financial burden on Bakhtiari but sends an implicit government-sponsored message that he is the kind of person who should be discouraged from owning a home in B.C.“The immigration minister’s delay in processing his application for permanent resident status contributed to the imposition of the surtax and loss of dignity, loss of social status, psychological distress and anxiety resulting from the imposition of the surtax and the implicit message of the surtax,” the lawsuit alleges.

Bakhtiari wants to be reimbursed for the surtax, the lien removed, the law amended, and paid damages.

“Discrimination against Bakhtiari, who has been a resident of British Columbia for 27 years, is contrary to the true intention of the legislature,” Gratl said.

He added that the purpose of the surtax is to promote home ownership by long-term residents and the one-year limit is arbitrary and unreasonable.

The attorney-general has told the court that persons in Bakhtiari’s position should not be subject to the surtax.

“The immigration minister’s unjustified delay of more than five years to process my client’s application for permanent resident status deprived him of an exemption from the 20-per-cent foreign buyer property surtax,” Gratl said.

“It might be tempting to believe that the wealthy are not entitled to civil liberties, but in law the right of equality belongs to everyone.”

The federal and provincial governments have roughly three weeks after they receive a copy of the suit to respond.

Source: Ian Mulgrew: Refugee says foreign buyers property tax discriminates

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Expert opinion mixed on changes to N.S. student immigration program

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

One small point in this article struck me: “He says familiarity with the local economy allows greater success opening businesses such as restaurants and grocers stores.”

Highlights that for some, study is mainly an immigration pathway to relatively lower skilled jobs, rather than building an innovation economy:

Immigration experts in Nova Scotia have mixed views about how changes to a fast-track program for international students will affect over-all immigration.

Last week, the province disqualified students who studied outside the province from applying to the Nova Scotia Experience: Express Entry (NSEEE) immigration stream.

It was a shock to hundreds of foreign students who had already moved to Nova Scotia and worked for months toward the program’s one-year employment target. It offered the chance to apply for permanent residency after 12 months rather than the usual two years.

People have come here on the understanding that this program is available to them,” said Elizabeth Wozniak of North Star Immigration Law in Halifax, “To have that program pulled out from under them midway through doesn’t seem fair at all.”

On Thursday Labour, Skills and Immigration Minister Jill Balser announced a record boost in Nova Scotia’s immigration allocation from the federal government — 400 new spots for the provincial nominee program, and an extra 1,173 spaces under the Atlantic Immigration Program.

Wozniak thinks restricting the NSEEE could make it more challenging to fill those new spots.

Still a draw for students

“The changes to this program … really are going to make it the least attractive of the immigration programs, whereas in the past it was one of the ones that was the most popular,” she said.

But an immigration lawyer in Bridgewater believes Nova Scotia officials will still be able to fill the province’s expanded allocation.

“I don’t recall them ever falling below their quotas or allocations, so I expect that they will meet that,” said David Nurse of McInnes Cooper.

Nurse says the top tiers of Canadian student immigrants are graduating with master’s and PhD degrees, and usually find work right away in their chosen fields.

He says students in Nova Scotia’s immigration streams play an important role in local labour markets while upgrading their language and employment skills.

“They are adding to the labour market. They’re contributing here in Nova Scotia,” he said.

Support from a former student worker

Samual Shaji came to Nova Scotia from southern India to study.

He graduated from Cape Breton University in 2020 with a degree in environmental science.

Then he secured a job managing a McDonald’s restaurant in Bedford, and was able to apply for permanent residency after 12-months thanks to the NSEEE.

But Shaji says many international students in Nova Scotia aren’t so fortunate.

He says it’s difficult to get restaurant jobs in smaller communities such as Sydney and Antigonish, and that lack of experience means students from elsewhere often get hired first after graduation.

“There is a McDonalds and a Tim Horton’s in every street in Toronto or Edmonton, so they have more experience in that job,” Shaji said, “Employers tend to hire them.”

‘They know the market of Nova Scotia’

“A lot of international students are moving from county to county because they cannot get into any job that will help them in immigration,” he said.

While Shaji sympathizes with the struggle of all international students in Canada, he thinks focusing the fast track on Nova Scotia students will lead to more graduates sticking around.

He says familiarity with the local economy allows greater success opening businesses such as restaurants and grocers stores.

Source: Expert opinion mixed on changes to N.S. student immigration program

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Swiss government rejects automatic citizenship for those born in Switzerland

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

On 15 June 2022, a proposal put forward by Stefania Prezioso Batou, a federal parliamentarian from Geneva, to grant automatic citizenship to those born in Switzerland was rejected by 112 to 75 votes in Switzerland’s federal parliament, reported 20 Minutes.

Batou would like to see the introduction of jus soliwhere a child born in Switzerland to foreign parents and schooled in Switzerland would automatically qualify for Swiss citizenship at the age of 18.

Those against the idea argued that being born and raised in Switzerland did not guarantee integration. In addition, automating the process at a federal level would run counter to cantonal independence on the naturalisation process.

A similar proposal was rejected in December 2021 by the Council of States, Switzerland’s upper house.

Unrestricted jus soli, or birthright citizenship, is rare beyond North and South America, where it remains the norm. Beyond these regions, only Chad, Lesotho, Tanzania, Tuvalu and Pakistan have it, while another 30 odd nations have restricted forms of it.

Gaining Swiss citizenship is slow and difficult. It requires a minimum of 10 years residence in Switzerland on the right kind of permit and a long list of other requirements. Applications for Swiss nationality must be approved by the federal administration, cantons and the municipality where the applicant resides. In the end, many who call Switzerland home never get around to becoming Swiss, sometimes after several generations.

Source: Swiss government rejects automatic citizenship for those born in Switzerland

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Chris Selley: Asking a baby to get help from Russia is another Ottawa disgrace

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

These kinds of stories are showing up more regularly, given the (small) number of cases and the publicity of the court case and efforts by the lawyer and advocates to generate public attention.

The advantage of the first generation cut-off remains its clarity and simplicity to administer in a consistent manner, in contrast to the previous provisions which were not. But part of the “package” when the change was made over 10 years ago were provisions for statelessness whose implementation would take into account the particular circumstances, implicitly in an understanding if not compassionate manner.

This would appear to be one of those situations where IRCC could have shown more common sense in reviewing the case.

Unfortunately, we can’t be surprised by the obtuseness regarding Russia given Global Affairs and their Minister’s Office regarding the Russia Day embassy reception:

Recent events have called ever more into question Canada’s basic competencies on the world stage, both on the ground and especially in the back office. We made a hash of evacuating our Afghan friends as the Taliban retook the country, then forced many who escaped to wait for months while we churned through their paperwork. The same delays are plaguing many Ukrainians who accepted Canada’s offers of help. Speaking of Ukraine: A senior foreign affairs official’s presence at the Russian embassy’s garden party continues to boggle the national mind. On the much more mundane end of the spectrum: With six months’ notice, IRCC failed to approve a visa for popular Formula One reporter Karun Chandhok in time for this weekend’s Montreal Grand Prix.

Is it sloth? Understaffing? Active malice? It’s difficult to tell. But the story of the Burgess family — father and husband Gregory, mother and wife Viktoriya, and baby Philip, who currently live in Hong Kong — combines all these threads into a perfectly absurd package.

I first spoke to Gregory around six months ago. He is a 46-year-old Edmontonian with deep, permanent roots (and citizenship) in Canada and nowhere else — his great-grandparents immigrated to Alberta from Ukraine in 1894 — but who just happened to have been born in Connecticut. Because his infant son Philip was the second consecutive generation born on foreign soil, our citizenship law does not automatically recognize Philip as Canadian. Gregory and Viktoriya, who is Russian, nevertheless wish to relocate eventually to Canada and think it reasonable they be allowed to do so.

The bureaucrats at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) are having none of it.

Six months ago, the situation was approaching emergency: Gregory’s and Viktoriya’s work visas were soon to expire. Things have stabilized since, Gregory told me this week over Zoom while wrangling a seven-month-old at 6 a.m. “Hong Kong has been very humane to us,” he said, including issuing Philip a Hong Kong identity card. That’s at least proof that a government recognizes his existence, but it offers no path to citizenship.

The Burgesses and their lawyers and advocates quite reasonably insist Philip is stateless as defined in the 1954 UN Convention: “a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.” In keeping with Canada’s international obligations, the Citizenship Act compels minister Sean Fraser to unilaterally grant citizenship in some cases of statelessness, and invites him to in others.

But when Gregory filed an application for Philips’ citizenship on grounds of statelessness, he got an amazing answer: Basically, IRCC wants proof some other country won’t take the kid off their hands.

On June 3, “senior decision maker” E. Nguyen wrote to Burgess asking for “a resual (sic) letter and/or correpondence (sic) from the American authorities advising that Philip … does not have a claim to American citizenship.” (Refusal and correspondence are the mistyped words.)

The answer is a bit complicated, but nevertheless U.S. citizenship rules are clear and easily Googleable: The simple answer is no.

It gets better: E. Nguyen wants the same refusal letter — no word of a lie — from the Russian authorities.

These are the Russian authorities raining death on Ukraine, heavily sanctioned by Ottawa, whose garden parties we must on no account attend. Canada’s travel advisory for Russia flashes bright red: “If you are in Russia, you should leave.”

Oh, and senior decision-maker E. Nguyen requires these documents within 30 days. IRCC would struggle to order a pizza in 30 days.

Even if the Burgess family were content to live in a pariah state run by a warmongering madman, Russia wouldn’t be a realistic option: Russian citizenship rules, also easily Googleable, stipulate Gregory would need to formally agree to Philip gaining Russian citizenship through his mother — but Gregory would have no immediate claim to citizenship himself. What parent would consent to the potential splitting up of his family?

When I wrote about this in January, two people with intimate knowledge of the IRCC bureaucracy and the Citizenship Act objected to my characterization of the second-generation-born-aboard rule as a “dumb law, easily fixed.” I remain convinced: Instead of judging prospective infant citizens by their parents’ accidental birthplaces, we should judge them by their parents’ substantial connection to Canada, just as we do for would-be naturalized citizens.

Admittedly, though, that’s only a fix in law. If it takes two or three or four years for IRCC to determine such “substantial connections,” families like the Burgesses will still be left in the lurch. And many will be in much more perilous situations than the Burgesses are.

In the meantime, there is an easy fix: Sean Fraser, the minister, can grant citizenship to anyone he chooses, any time he likes, as often as he likes. Unfortunately, with more than 24 hours’ notice, IRCC could not manage to respond to my questions, which included “why won’t he?”

Gregory is admirably equanimous about all this. “I don’t want to overdramatize things,” he told me. “It’s not terrible. … We’re OK here and everything’s fine.” But that uncertainty hangs over their heads, and they’re baffled. “I don’t know what the agenda is,” Gregory said. “I don’t know what’s achieved by this.”

Me neither.

There aren’t tens of thousands of Canadians in similar situations as the Burgesses, but there aren’t just dozens either. Whatever resources are being expended fighting seven-month-old Philip Burgess for Canadian citizenship — and a good few other children in the same situation — would surely be put to better use helping our various and shameful citizenship-and-immigration backlogs.

Source: Chris Selley: Asking a baby to get help from Russia is another Ottawa disgrace

And from the Star:

A Canadian with Ukrainian roots has been told his baby boy may have to apply — and be rejected — for Russian citizenship before he can become a Canadian.

“My son is not going to Russia and not becoming a Russian citizen when they’re killing Ukrainians,” says Gregory Burgess.

The bizarre situation has come about for a baby who is technically considered “stateless” because neither he nor his father was born in Canada.

Burgess, 46, has always considered himself a Canadian. He grew up in Edmonton and his Ukrainian great-grandparents arrived in what is today’s Alberta back in 1894.

But Burgess was born in the United States, where his father was then working, before coming to Canada at age seven. He acquired citizenship through his Canadian mother.

That, coupled with the fact that his son was born during the pandemic in Hong Kong, where Burgess is currently working, has meant the baby is not guaranteed Canadian citizenship.

It’s the result of a controversial policy change brought in by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper back in 2009 that was meant to curtail the number of “Canadians of convenience.”

“Canada is my home,” says Burgess. “I don’t have another home. It’s where my family has been for more than a hundred years.”

The so-called “second generation” citizenship cut-off against Canadians born abroad was introduced by the Conservative government after Ottawa’s massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians from Beirut during a month-long war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.

The $85-million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience” about individuals with Canadian citizenship who live permanently outside of Canada without “substantive ties” to Canada but were part of the government liability.

It’s now complicating things for Burgess.

The expat spent his formative years in Canada and graduated from the University of Alberta.

“My mother got us citizenship. And as soon as my Canadian citizenship was taken care of, one wouldn’t assume that somewhere down the road you become a lesser citizen because of it.”

Starting in 2004, he took up jobs in Asia. He met his now wife, Viktoriya Kharzhanovich, in 2017 when he was working in Shanghai. The following year, she applied unsuccessfully for a Canadian visa to accompany him to his cousin’s wedding.

In 2019, he started to explore the spousal sponsorship process to bring his common-law wife to Canada, just before the pandemic was beginning in China.

The couple moved to Hong Kong from China in June 2020 when he got a two-year employment contract in building information management there. Meanwhile, he and his wife, now 41, decided to start a family.

Due to the arduous paperwork required, they didn’t submit their spousal application until last November. It was during their preparation for the application when his lawyer noticed he wasn’t born in Canada and raised the issue about the two-generation citizenship cutoff for the yet-to-be born Philip.

Kharzhanovich, who had already been refused a visitor visa before, was more than seven months into her pregnancy and did not have an obstetrician and gynecologist or health insurance in Canada. She was also not scheduled for her COVID vaccination until after giving birth to Philip.

“After consulting physicians, researching flights, examining visa options, and studying quarantine rules, we determined that it was not safe or possible to fly to Canada for Viktoriya to give birth there,” says Burgess, who has since joined six other Canadian families in a Charter challenge against the citizenship cut-off rules.

Since neither Burgess nor his wife is a Hong Kong citizen or permanent resident, Philip doesn’t have permanent status in the former British colony, now part of the People’s Republic of China.

“It’s a lot of sleepless nights,” Burgess says. “It’s very important to me that I never lose my job (in Hong Kong) and nothing ever goes wrong because if it does, then that’s catastrophic. And so there’s that stress.

“It’s just constantly trying to get on the paperwork and it seems endless. I keep putting in paperwork or talking to the embassy or consulate. And I’ve been at it for nine months basically.”

At the advice of the Canadian consulate, Burgess applied for a two-year “limited validity passport” for Philip in November, which was ultimately refused by Passport Canada. Burgess’s own parents weren’t abroad serving in the Canadian military or for the federal or provincial governments at his birth in the U.S., hence his baby didn’t qualify.

Earlier this year, as a last resort, Burgess filed an application for a grant of citizenship under section 5 (4) of the Canadian Citizenship Act that gives Immigration Minister Sean Fraser the discretionary power to do so to “alleviate cases of statelessness or of special and unusual hardship or to reward services of an exceptional value to Canada.”

In a response to the family’s request this month, the immigration department gave the couple 30 days to provide proof of Philip having been refused a claim to American and/or Russian citizenship.

“Following a review of his application and supporting documentation, it appears that Philip Alexander Burgess may have a claim to American citizenship through yourself and to Russian citizenship through his mother, Viktoriya Kharzhanovich,” said the letter prepared by the immigration case management branch.

There was no mention or concern raised about Burgess’s and the family’s expiring status in Hong Kong, and the urgency to resolve the crisis.

“I feel like I’m being asked to show that I’m in duress. It’s continually asking, ‘show us it’s a bad situation.’ And I’m like it’s not bad yet, but it’s only because I’m staying ahead of the game,” says Burgess, who does not have an American passport or meet the “substantial connection” requirement to convey citizenship to Philip.

Although Philip is not at the end of his rope and may still acquire Canadian citizenship by naturalization if his father can successfully sponsor his mother and him to Canada, Burgess says he has yet to get an acknowledgment of receipt of his sponsorship application and the family is running out of status in Hong Kong.

Their lawyer, Sujit Choudhry, says Philip’s statelessness is only one of the factors for the consideration of the immigration minister, who should not overlook the “special and unusual hardship” the family is facing under the circumstances.

“The government’s insistence that Gregory seek Russian citizenship for Philip is Kafkaesque,” says Choudhry, who is also representing the other families in the ongoing Charter challenge against the citizenship act before the Superior Court of Ontario. “Canada has advised its citizens to not travel to Russia for geopolitical reasons.

“If Philip becomes a Russian citizen, Gregory will not be able to travel to Russia to take care of him. Canada’s Citizenship Act will produce a profoundly unjust family separation. This law is clearly unconstitutional.”

Source: ‘Kafkaesque’: Will the infant son of a Ukrainian Canadian need to turn to Russia for citizenship?

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Mills: Just another day in Canada’s passport purgatory

2022/06/18 Leave a comment

Useful account. Positive note – the patience of applicants and the “kind, helpful and patient the front-line passport officers”:

The sun was barely over the treetops when I drove into the parking lot of the Passport Canada office in the Rideauview Mall on Meadowlands Drive. It was 5:45 Monday morning and the line was already snaking along the side of the building facing Prince of Wales, and around the corner. I found my place in line, extracted a novel from my tote bag, and sat down cross-legged on the ground.

The office itself wouldn’t open until 8:30 a.m. There were already more than 30 people ahead of me.

I had known my visit to the passport office would be a lengthy one. For weeks, media outlets had chronicled the chaos: the long wait times, the desperate travellers who camped out overnight at passport offices in hopes of getting their documents quickly.

I had snacks, a bottle of water and a variety of reading material. As the chill of the morning seeped into my bones from the cold concrete, I wished I had thought to bring a folding chair, as many others had. But at least it wasn’t raining. I’d also been able to book an entire day off work to devote to my mission: getting our daughters’ passports in time for a weeklong holiday in Maine.

My family’s adventures with Passport Canada started in February when our passports expired. We got new photos taken, and filled out renewal applications for my husband and myself, as well as brand-new adult passport applications for our twin daughters, who were then 17. We dutifully mailed them off a full nine weeks before a planned trip to New York City in May.

April came and went with no passports. By the beginning of May, we were starting to worry. We had a flight booked to New York on May 21 — an early birthday gift for the girls, who would turn 18 the following week. I decided to phone Passport Canada.

The first time, I called six times just to get on the line and there were 187 people ahead of me on hold. The second time, I called 35 times to get on the line and there were more than 200 people ahead of me. When I finally got through, I learned that my daughters’ applications had been rejected because we had not provided sufficient proof of Canadian citizenship … even though we sent back their old child passports. I had failed to include their original birth certificates.

We didn’t make it to New York. There was no way, however, that we were going to miss out on Maine, our favourite summer destination since the girls were little, and which we hadn’t seen in two years. This is what had brought me to Rideauview Mall.

They let us into the building around 7:30 a.m. The line re-formed. It started at the Passport Canada office door, stretched to the Prince of Wales entrance, and curved around and along the opposite wall. A young woman in line who must have been a camp counsellor at some point took on the role of directing new people who came through the door (those poor folks who thought an hour early was sufficient!) towards the end of the line.

I overheard people saying they were travelling that week. Even the next day. Two young men came through the door just before 8 a.m. hauling enormous rolling suitcases. There were families with young children and others with elderly relatives. One young guy near the end of the line recorded a video for his social media followers. I caught the words: “No, this is not a third-world country. This is Canada.”

And yet, there was a sense of camaraderie. Everyone was in the same boat, chatting with their line-mates about where they were going and when and sometimes about what had gone wrong with their applications. Many were clearly anxious, but also very civilized. I couldn’t help feeling thankful to be living in Canada rather than, say, Florida.

Finally, the office opened. The line advanced. Immediately, Passport Canada staffers began shouting information in both official languages, triaging people based on their departure dates, separating those who were picking up completed passports or whose files had been transferred from the walk-ins, and confirming (repeatedly) that everyone had proof they were travelling within the next 45 business days.

Eight hours and 15 minutes later, I left the office clutching a receipt that would allow me to pick up my daughters’ passports in 14 days. I had exhausted my snack supply, read 200 pages of my novel, and was consistently impressed with how kind, helpful and patient the front-line passport officers managed to be in the face of so much stress. I also had a lot of time to ponder what might make the process more efficient:

• Hire and train passport officers to be on standby even if they typically work in other areas so they can be pulled in temporarily at times like this. That would allow for the extension of office hours, which would help clear the backlog.

• Allow Canadian citizens who hold child passports to upgrade to adult passports through a renewal process rather than having them fill out a brand-new adult passport application as though they’ve never held a Canadian passport before. I’m certain this is the cause of a lot of errors and delays, as it was with us.

• Allow Canadian citizens who hold a current adult passport that’s about to expire to renew online. This would force the government to come up with some acceptable process for the use and verification of digital photos, but isn’t it past time for that?

• Develop a new electronic passport form that flags obvious errors, like not including an address or postal code for your guarantors while you’re filling it out (rather than having the passport officers flag it for you when you get to the office).

Canadian passports are precious things and issuing them is a basic function of our federal government. We’ve got to get it right. The front-line officers are doing their job exceptionally well under these circumstances. Now it’s up to our elected representatives to ensure this situation never happens again.

Lara Mills is a professor in the public relations program at Algonquin College.

Source: Mills: Just another day in Canada’s passport purgatory

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Immigration backlog in Canada reaches 2.4M

2022/06/18 Leave a comment

Good overview of the backlogs, with helpful charts (nice to see CTV investing in good data journalism). The pandemic, like in so many areas, highlighting long-standing government management and operational issues, one that IRCC has started to address but is a multi-year project given IT and other modernization:

The immigration backlog in Canada has ballooned to 2.4 million people, with over 250,000 applications adding to the pile over a one-month span alone.

That’s according to recent data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) across all categories, from temporary residence and permanent residence to citizenship applications.

“I have not seen backlogs like these in 16 years of my career as an immigration lawyer,” Rick Lamanna, director at Fragomen Canada, an immigration services provider, told CTV News in a phone interview on Thursday.

“Prior to the pandemic, things were running fairly well.”

The increased backlog has already led to frustrations for those waiting to receive an application update from IRCC.

The recent data only raises more questions than provides answers to the applicants in limbo.

Can’t see the graphs below? Click here

Despite being among the top five destinations with immigrant-friendly policies around the world, Canada is seeing an upward trend in backlogs since the pandemic.

Long processing times and a lack of communication and transparency are some of the many issues highlighted by families that reached out to CTVNews.ca.

‘EXTREMELY STRESSFUL’

Lamanna said changing processing times are preventing families and even businesses from planning anything ahead of time.

“If you were to go online right now, and take a look at the processing time, out of India, it’s taking close to a year,” he said.

Part of the problem he pointed out is that IRCC faced a cascading effect from the fall of Afghanistan and then the pandemic.

During COVID-19, IRCC staff was not deemed as “essential workers” so the backlogs only started to grow. Now with the Ukraine war, there is a massive backlog, he adds. Between March 17 and June 8, 2022, 296,163 applications were received under the program.

For most, the long delays have postponed their life decisions as they continue to wait in another country.

Kazim Ali applied for permanent residency through the Express Entry program in 2020 from Pakistan and has been waiting since to receive an update. He said he has no idea how long he has to wait until he begins his new life in Canada with his wife.

“Our lives have come to a screeching halt because of a lack of communication and no clear timeline on the processing delays,” Ali said in an interview with CTVNews.ca from Pakistan over a zoom call on Wednesday.

Ali said the estimated processing time was six months at the time of submission.

Despite repeated emails, Ali’s application seems to have come to a screeching halt. He said the IRCC helpline is of no help to those outside Canada.

He was told to reach out to the visa office that is processing his application. Currently, it lies in the London, UK office with no updates.

Ali has put a stop to his long-term plans–including his career, buying a home, and family planning.

He said the wait is now taking an agonizing toll on his mental and emotional health and has been “extremely stressful” for the couple.

“IRCC really needs a reality check and needs to understand that it is not only processing a bunch of papers but making decisions that are affecting lives of families and generations to come,” Ali said.

In an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca, IRCC’s communications officer Jeffrey MacDonald said that application inventories grew during the pandemic while health and travel restrictions were in effect, and it will take some time to fully recover.

McDonald said IRCC is moving towards a more integrated, modernized, and centralized working environment in order to help speed up application processing globally.

He said IRCC is also working to improve the level of service at the Client Support Centre (CSC).  Between April 2021 and March 2022, IRCC’s CSC communication lines received over 10.5 million inquiries (8.6 million by telephone and 1.9 million by email).

‘COVID IS NO LONGER AN EXCUSE’

But Mustakima Gazi, who works as a long-term care pandemic resident assistant, said COVID-19 can no longer be an excuse.

Gazi, a Canadian citizen from London, Ont., has been waiting for her husband’s spousal application since December 2021 and has seen incremental progress since she last spoke with CTVNews.ca in May.

But despite the application reaching the next stage, she remains discouraged.

The couple is a part of a Facebook community that includes families waiting for IRCC updates. She said that some who had submitted the request for medical exam ( a requirement for those filing for permanent residency) last year have still been waiting to get an update from IRCC.

Gazi’s husband lives alone in the Netherlands and with his application in limbo, is under immense mental stress.

Making matters worse, she said, are the processing times on the online portal that keep changing.

She said one would think that the processing time would decrease as applications are being processed.

“But that is not the case,” she said. “At one point the estimated time was 12 months, and the next week it was 23 months.”

Processing times for different visa categories [May vs. June]

Data was retrieved on May 6, 2022 and June 14, 2022 for comparison purposes and is subject to change on the website due to fresh updates.

Page 1 of 2

Table with 3 columns and 54 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 30.

Categories 14-Jun-22 6-May-22
PR Cards
Waiting for the first card 71 days 99 days
Renewing or replacing a PR card 60 days 70 days
Citizenship
Citizenship grant 27 months 27 months
Citizenship certificate (proof of citizenship) 17 months 17 months
Resumption of citizenship 23 months 23 months
Renunciation of citizenship 15 months 15 months
Search of citizenship records 15 months 15 months
Citizenship for adopted persons Part1: 10 months Part1: 12 months
Part 2: Varies by complexity Part 2: Varies by complexity
Family Sponsorship
Spouse or common-law partner living inside Canada 15 months 15 months
Spouse or common-law partner living outside Canada 23 months 22 months
Dependent child depends where the child lives depends where the child lives
Parents or grandparents 34 months 33 months
Adopted child/relative depends where the adopted child/relative lives depends where the adopted child/relative lives
Temporary residence (visiting/studying/working)
Visitor visa (from outside Canada) depends from where you are applying from depends from where you are applying from
Visitor visa (from inside Canada) Online: 166 days Online: 16 days
Paper: 29 days Paper: 27 days
Visitor extension Online- 196 days Online- 214 days
Paper:214 days Paper:216 days
Supervisa (parents/grandparents) depends where they live depends where they live
Study Permit (from outside Canada) 12 weeks 11 weeks
Study Permit (from inside Canada) 3 weeks 3 weeks
Study Permit extension Online: 65 days Online: 60 days
Paper: 193 days Paper: 219 days

Processing times vary based on: if the application is complete, how quickly applications are processed after they are received, how easily information is verified, how long the applicant takes to respond to any requests or concerns other factors. Additional information depends on the visa category applied for and is on the website.

Table: Deena Zaidi/CTVNews.ca Source: Government of Canada Created with Datawrapper

Gazi has tried to call IRCC many times to get more information on our application, hoping to speed things up, but has never been able to reach anyone who could provide her any answers on the status.

“Sometimes the helpline just gets disconnected without even putting me in a waiting line,” she said.

The one time that she got connected, the IRCC agent tried to help but could not provide any updates since the application was being processed outside Canada.

“Everyone is fighting a battle and trying their best to get through these hard times. We want to be close to our families who can support us,” she said. But the delay is leading to nothing but desperation.

‘ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION’

Among those frustrated by the lack of communication and transparency is Anne Marie Trad, a Canadian citizen waiting to be with her husband, Pierre Ajaltouni, since 2019.

The couple married in 2018 in Beirut, Lebanon and Trad filed for a spousal visa from there in 2019.

It has been over 50 months since.

Trad has tried all the routes to get updates: she contacted the MP office, reached out to her local MP, filled out web forms, and called the IRCC helpline. But nothing has helped.

Her husband’s spousal application was filed outside Canada (Beirut) so navigating through the application status is more complicated than those processed in Canada.

Trad said the status has been saying “doing a background check” since 2019.

In hopes of a quicker route, she filed for a visit visa from Canada in 2020. But even that has seen no momentum.

Trad last visited her husband in August 2021 and now worries that with Lebanon’s ongoing crisis, it could be increasingly difficult to make these visits.

The three-year wait has taken a toll on the couple’s mental health – leading to anxiety, and depression. Trad said her husband has lost a lot of weight and she is concerned about his health.

The couple took a legal route last year to get immigration officials to act on files caught up in delays – a writ of mandamus.

The legal route is definitely not cheap, Trad said, but she sees no better option to speed up the process.

“We just want to get our life back on track after wasting three years in waiting,” she said.

WHAT IS IRCC DOING?

MacDonald said that a number of factors can impact the application and these include the type of the application submitted, and how well and quickly applicants respond to the IRCC requests. These requests include biometrics and additional information. Verification and complexity of the application can also affect the processing time of an application.

To support the processing and settlement of new permanent residents to Canada, the government has committed $2.1 billion over five years and ongoing $317.6 million in new funding announced in Budget 2022.

With additional funding of $85 million from the 2021 Economic and Fiscal Update, IRCC is looking to reduce application inventories accumulated during the pandemic by hiring new processing staff, digitizing applications, and implementing technology-based solutions such as digital intake and advanced analytics.

Lamanna said the hiring will help reduce the backlogs but that itself will take some time.

“Even if IRCC hires more people, it could take months before any group of new hires is actually effective in tackling the backdrop since that would require new training,” he said.

He said digitizing is a step in the right direction but even that could take years before it is finally implemented and may not assist those who are currently waiting and may help new applicants in 2023.

“It is a very difficult situation,” he said.

HOW DID IT GET SO BAD?

Many immigration law firms have seen a spike in the mandamus applications. In over 10 months, Toronto -based law firm, Abramovich & Tchern has processed over 200 mandamus files.

It is unfortunate that applicants have to take this route, Lev Abramovich, an immigration lawyer at Abramovich & Tchern, told CTVNews.ca on Thursday.

Abramovich, who is not representing any of the applicants in this story, said it wasn’t COVID-19 itself that created the backlog, but it ultimately revealed the “archaic structure and the management style that is not very agile.

”After the pandemic hit, processing centers were operating with very limited capacity, and that partly contributed to the increasing backlogs.

Some application categories filed during the pandemic were paper-based and lay in offices, gathering dust for many months.

Abramovich said most mandamus applications his firm has received have been from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, India, and China.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Lamanna said one of the solutions is focusing on prioritizing groups or processes and fixing them instead of trying to have a catch-all approach. “So, people understand how to process these applications,” he said.

Abramovich said the existing system needs to be “centralized and agile.”

Many times, an application is stuck in an office outside Canada that may be partly functional due to a number of reasons such as shut down or remote work orders.

He said a centralized agile system would manage applications by redistributing them in different offices.

“And they will be processed, more or less based on when they came in, not based on the country of nationality or other factors which is deeply unfair,” Abramovich said.

Abramovich said the new immigration minister inherited the existing system and has been open to dialogue, and that an independent review could provide recommendations for a long-lasting change. He added an impartial investigation to understand the actual root causes will only help prevent something like this from happening in the future.

“We are dealing with human lives here and let’s not pretend it has something to do with COVID-19 and that finances alone are going to be sufficient,” he said.

Source: Immigration backlog in Canada reaches 2.4M

 

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‘There is systemic discrimination in our policing’: New Toronto police data confirms officers use more force against Black people

2022/06/17 Leave a comment

Significant. However, most activists remain sceptical, at least the ones I heard on CBC:

The hard data proves what has long been known and felt by members of the city’s Black communities.

Toronto police officers use more force against Black people, more often, with no clear explanation why. Except for race.

That is a key takeaway from a landmark new report containing never-before-seen data on officer use of force and strip searches — statistics that, for the first time, were collected and released by the Toronto Police Service itself.

The race-based statistics are so stark that Chief James Ramer offered an apology to the city’s Black community, coinciding with the release of a 119-slide presentation on the force’s findings.

“I am sorry and I apologize unreservedly,” Ramer said Wednesday morning.

“Our own analysis of our data from 2020 discloses that there is systemic discrimination in our policing,” Ramer said. “That is, there is a disproportionate impact experienced by racialized people, particularly those of Black communities.”

Meanwhile, police this weekend warned officers to brace for a “challenging” public reaction that will “lead some people to question the hard work you do every day.” 

Among the major findings: In 2020, Toronto officers used force on Black people about four times more often than their share of the population — and Black Torontonians were five times more likely to have force used against them than white ones. 

And in those cases when force was used, an officer was more than twice as likely to draw a firearm on a Black person they thought was unarmed than a white person they thought was unarmed. 

The statistics show overrepresentation in other racialized communities, too. If you are Indigenous, you were more likely to be subjected to a strip search, a highly invasive police practice; and members of the Latino, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian communities were also more likely to have force used against them.

The sobering data released Wednesday aligns with past external reports that have found Black people are overrepresented in police use of forcein this city. 

But the new data uses internal police records to go a step further, evaluating racial disparities in police use of force not only against the city’s population but within the pool of people interacting with police — those who were arrested, considered suspects, ticketed for provincial offences and more.

“This allows us to compare outcomes against the population that actually had contact with police,” a Toronto police statement said, adding it allows police to “focus our efforts on the actions that we can control.”

In other words: If officers were simply responding to higher rates of crime in any one group, this method should make the racial disparity disappear.

Even here, Black people were overrepresented, found to be 1.6 times more likely to be subjected to force compared to their percentage of total police interactions in 2020. Latino people were overrepresented by 1.5 times and Middle Eastern people were overrepresented by 1.2 times.

And Black people were already more than twice as likely to be the subject of this baseline police enforcement. Although they represented approximately 10 per cent of the city’s population in 2020, they accounted for 22 per cent of what police called “enforcement actions,” including arrests, tickets and other stops.

The police report has been independently peer-reviewed, Ramer said. 

He added: “This is some of the most important work we have ever done.”

Where the data is coming from

The race-based data released Wednesday details the use of force and strip searches conducted by Toronto police in 2020.

The use of force data is taken from Ontario’s “use of force reports” — documents required to be filled out whenever an officer uses physical force requiring medical attention, deploys a TASER, or draws or points their firearm. In 2019, Ontario’s provincial government required all police services to begin recording the officer’s perception of the race of the person they used force against.

Toronto police then cross-referenced these reports with internal “occurrence” reports — allowing them to conduct a deeper analysis, including of the type of call and the location of the incident.

In total in 2020, Toronto police said there were 949 use of force incidents involving 1,224 members of the public. Of those, 39 per cent were perceived as Black, while 36 per cent were perceived as white. (In 2020, 46 per cent of Toronto’s population was white.)

In 2020, Toronto police also began recording officer perception of race for strip searches — an invasive procedure conducted on people who are arrested. For years, Toronto police and other services were not capturing race-based data on strip searches, something critics said was long overdue.

The data analysis independently reviewed “leading experts” in race data collection with a human rights lens, Toronto police said. Since it began collecting race-based data, Toronto police has been consulting with a community advisory committee that includes members of Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.

Use of force — from low to high

Police use of force reports capture a range of interactions. Lower level force includes the use of aerosol spray, a baton, a police dog or a strike with a hand. Less lethal force is the use of a Taser or bean bag gun, and higher levels of force include when a firearm is pointed or discharged.

Of the 949 use of force incidents in 2020, a firearm was pointed at someone 371 times. The gun was fired four times, twice killing someone.

When officers use force, Toronto police were more likely to point a firearm toward a Black person compared to a white person.

Even in situations where police believed the subject was armed, a Black person was 1.5 times more likely to have a gun pulled on them than a white person in the same scenario.

The difference increased even when police didn’t think the subject had a weapon. In that scenario, a Black person was more than twice as likely as a white person to have a police officer pull out their gun and point it at them.

Black, South Asian and East/Southeast Asian people were more likely to experience higher uses of force compared to white people when it came to “less than lethal force,” such as a bean bag gun.

Locations

https://misc.thestar.com/interactivegraphic/2022/06-june/15-use-of-force-rate-map/index-doubled.html

Toronto police also examined police officer use of force rates in police divisions across the city. The results showed that, overall, incidents involving white people had lower use of force rates while those involving Black people had higher use of force rates. 

The differences appear to be stark in some mid-Toronto police divisions, including downtown’s 51 and 52 Divisions. 

In those areas, officers used force on a white person in .5 to .75 per cent of all enforcement interactions (such as arrests). But when the person was Black, force was used in more than 1.75 per cent of these same interactions — numbers that show these divisions used force against Black people around two to four times more frequently.

The differences, Toronto police said, are “not explained” by the demographic makeup of the local population. 

In other divisions there is a much lower racial disparity, or none at all, according to the data. In Scarborough’s 42 Division and midtown’s 53 Division, for example, the data shows no difference in use of force between white and Black people.

Calls for service and types of offences 

In calls for service that were classified as violent, Black people were 1.2 times more likely and Indigenous people were 1.4 times more likely to be on the receiving end of officer use of force, according to the data.

With calls regarding a person in crisis, Black people were nearly two times more likely to be subjected to force, while Indigenous people were 1.4 times.

Black people were found to be more likely to be subjected to police officer use of force in incidents involving assaults, mental health calls, fraud, mischief and robbery. 

Strip searches

In 2020, more than 22 per cent of all arrests — more than one in five — resulted in a strip search by Toronto police (7,114 strip searches in total, from 31,979 arrests). 

Of those, 31 per cent of those strip searched were perceived as Black, roughly three times their share of the population and higher than their 27-per-cent share of total arrests.

Indigenous people showed the highest overrepresentation in strip searches. They were overrepresented by 1.3 times compared to their presence in all Toronto police arrests. They accounted for just three per cent of the total arrests but represented to 4 per cent of all strip searches. 

The data was collected the same year Toronto police made a significant policy change to strip searches in response to a scathing report by Ontario’s police complaints watchdog that found the force conducted “far too many” strip searches. Before, more than 27 per cent of arrests resulted in a strip search; following the changes, which included having a supervisor sign off on all strip searches, that number dropped to 4.9 per cent of arrests.

Data from 2021 shows a marked decline in the number of strip searches, though arrests involving white and Black people were still more likely to result in a strip search, compared to the average. 

Source: ‘There is systemic discrimination in our policing’: New Toronto police data confirms officers use more force against Black people

And a somewhat contrary view regarding the need to include the context of crime rates in communities:

The problem with the Toronto Police report released Wednesday concluding that Blacks, Indigenous people and other racial minorities are disproportionately targeted by police when it comes to use-of-force incidents and body searches, is that it looks at only half the issue. It concludes the reason for this is systemic racism within the police force, for which Police Chief James Ramer publicly apologized and pledged to do better going forward, noting the study recommends 38 “action items” police will implement along with dozens of recommendations in other studies.

But what the report excludes are the crime rates in the various communities with which the police interact.

Logically that’s part of the equation because if they are higher in some communities than others, that will impact the frequency and type of their interactions with police.

However, it has been illegal for police forces in Ontario to gather or reveal this data for decades.

That was the result of a controversy that erupted in 1989 when then Toronto police superintendent Julian Fantino released statistics suggesting Blacks in one Toronto community were disproportionately involved in crime.

Fantino said he did it to counter allegations police were racist.But politicians, criminologists and civil rights groups responded that releasing the data without the context that the Black community was over-policed, was unscientific and would feed into racism.

As a result, race-based police statistics today are used solely to search for systemic bias within policing.

Scot Wortley of the University of Toronto and Maria Jung of Toronto Metropolitan University in a 2020 report for the Ontario Human Rights Commission which concluded Blacks were disproportionately arrested and charged by Toronto police compared to whites, cited both theories to explain why this happens.

One is the “Bias Thesis” which argues, “Black people are over-represented in police statistics because they are subject to biased or discriminatory treatment by the police and the broader criminal justice system. “Rates of Black offending stem from the negative consequences of centuries of colonialism, slavery and racial oppression … The impact of intergenerational trauma and contemporary social disadvantage, in turn, results in higher rates of Black offending.”

An alternative explanation, the “Higher Rate of Offending Thesis” argues “Black people engage in criminal activity at a higher level than other racial groups and this fact is accurately reflected in official crime statistics … when such factors as the criminal history of individuals and the seriousness of their offences are considered, there’s no evidence disparities in arrest rates are the result of police racism.”

The authors of the OHRC study cited “growing evidence (that) suggests that both explanations have merit … (that) the over-representation of Black people in arrest statistics may be caused both by higher rates of offending and racial bias within the criminal justice system.”

That is, police disproportionately arrest and charge Blacks (for example) because while the vast majority of Blacks are law-abiding, a minority are disproportionately involved in criminal activity and the reason is often due to the adverse social and economic conditions faced by Blacks because of systemic racism, not just in the police force, but in society in general.The problem is that by continuously ignoring the issue of crime rates within the communities with which the police interact, we are no longer looking honestly or completely at all aspects of the issue.

This will inevitably contribute to public skepticism among many about the findings of this latest report by Toronto Police identifying systemic racism in the force.

Source: GOLDSTEIN: Here’s why we no longer talk honestly about police race-based data

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

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