Raj: Quebec is using the Constitution to take away the rights of minorities. What if that becomes the norm?

2021/12/15 3 Comments

Good question although the solution of opening the constitution to provide “guardrails” for use of the notwithstanding clause would be opening a Pandora’s box given that other issues would emerge, not to mention garnering sufficient provincial support:

Fatemeh Anvari has started a national conversation.

The school teacher in Chelsea, Que., removed from her classroom this month because of her hijab, has put a face to Bill 21, the Quebec law that prevents those wearing religious symbols from holding certain public-sector jobs.

The law is popular in Quebec, where Premier François Legault defended it again Monday as reasonable and important to ensure secularism and the appearance of neutrality.

“People can teach if they take off their religious symbol while they teach, and when they are in the streets, at home, they can wear a religious symbol,” Legault told reporters.

The shocked parents of students at Chelsea Elementary School want to use their outrage to cast a light on Bill 21’s injustice.

But a Quebec Liberal MP hopes Anvari’s case prompts broader thinking. Anthony Housefather wants a national discussion on the use of the notwithstanding clause, and how to prevent the majority from using its position to curb the rights of minorities.

Anvari lost her ability to teach because Legault pre-emptively used the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ notwithstanding clause, section 33, giving the Quebec government the ability to trample on fundamental rights and shield its action from the courts. (It is doing so again with language Bill 96.)

“I’m not naïve about it,” the Mount Royal MP told me. Amending the Constitution to add parameters around the clause or eliminate it completely requires the approval of at least seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the Canadian population. The only other direct option would be Ottawa’s power of disallowance, last used to invalidate provincial law in 1943.

But Housefather thinks a conference with legal scholars or a committee of the House of Commons could explore:

1) whether the notwithstanding clause should be enacted through a simple majority vote;

2) whether the override clause should be able to override fundamental freedoms, such as conscience, religion, expression, and association, found in section 2 of the Charter;

3) whether the notwithstanding clause should be used pre-emptively.

He argues pre-emptive use wasn’t what the framers had in mind, back in 1981, when the override clause was inserted into the Charter to break an impasse between some premiers and Ottawa.

According to the Library of Parliament, Allan Blakeney, the then premier of Saskatchewan, referred to the measure as one that would allow Parliament and the legislatures to “override a court decision.” Roy McMurtry, the attorney general of Ontario, wrote that the notwithstanding clause would be used “in the unlikely event of a decision of the courts that is clearly contrary to the public interest.”

Housefather hopes the conversation can move beyond one focused on Quebec.

“Bill 21 is a Quebec issue, but the notwithstanding clause and the ability of any legislature to override fundamental rights is not a Quebec issue. It’s a national issue.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford used the notwithstanding clause this June to reintroduce a third-party election spending bill that had been struck down by the court. He previously threatened to use the clause if the court prevented him from interfering in the municipal election by changing the size of Toronto’s city council. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has mused about invoking section 33, and, last year, New Brunswick MLAs voted to remove the notwithstanding clause from a bill imposing mandatory vaccination for children in schools and daycares.

At the heart of the matter is getting the Supreme Court to review a 1988 decision that very broadly interpreted the clause. Back then, the court was ruling on a case from the early 80s. “The Charter was sort of wet behind the ears,” said Robert Leckey, the dean of law at McGill University, “and so the idea that the court got it right in 1988 in a way that would last for ages, doesn’t make sense to me.”

The top court has changed its mind on collective bargaining and more recently medically-assisted dying. Ottawa could step in with a reference to the Supreme Court, though Leckey believes a more strategic approach would be intervening at the Quebec Court of Appeal.

His big concern is that the notwithstanding clause becomes normalized, that Canadians stop being shocked by its use, and that, consequently, there are few political costs to invoking it. That would be truly dangerous, he said.

So if a national conversation can help discuss legitimate and illegitimate uses, Leckey’s for it.

“A lot of people have a sense that you shouldn’t use (the override clause) to authorize torture, but there is nothing on the face of section 33 or the Supreme Court’s judgment that would tell us that you shouldn’t use the notwithstanding clause to legalize torture,” he said.

“So there probably are some implicit norms around it that we haven’t done a very good job yet of fleshing out.”

Source: Quebec is using the Constitution to take away the rights of minorities. What if that becomes the norm?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

How the Grinch stole Chanukah: secularism is not a veil for systemic racism

2021/12/15 Leave a comment

Legitimate observation on timing, whether this was intentional or blindness:

In the same week that an elementary school teacher was removed from her classroom in Quebec for wearing a hijab, the Legault government announced it will loosen the rules for indoor gatherings right in time for Christmas.

I hate to be a Grinch, but in this multi-faith household as we put away the menorah and bring out the Christmas lights, I question when Quebec will stop pretending to be a secular society.

What a coincidence that at this time last year, the CAQ also considered allowing larger gatherings for Christmas, right when holidays from other faiths, such as Chanukah and Diwali, had ended. 

The Legault government preaches about separation between church and state, puts into law Bill 21 preventing public servants (teachers, police, judges, etc.) from wearing religious symbols, and insists that systemic racism is not an issue in Quebec; yet we are expected to believe that loosening of public health measures on Dec. 23 is linked to the state and not the church.

Quebec is not a religiously neutral society; it is a Catholic-based society. Its institutions close for Christmas and Easter; countless streets, towns, hospital, and schools are named after saints; and the crucifix that hung prominently in the national assembly for decades was only recently removed, following much debate and push back. 

Even Bill 21, an act respecting the laicity of state, accommodates those who practice the Catholic faith, since donning a cross around the neck can be concealed, unlike a hijab, turban, or kippah worn on the head.

As this questionable bill impede the lives of marginalized Quebecers, the CAQ government dares, once more, to tempt pandemic fate in the name of Christmas.

Linking new rules for private gatherings to one specific holiday will, of course, never be publicly stated. Instead, it is conveniently suggested that the timing is due to a stabilization in the number of hospitalizations, the fact that the Omicron variant is not circulating widely in the province, that children over five are now being vaccinated. 

This pandemic has brought many issues to light, including the value of critical thinking. Much information is believable when taken at face value, but even evidence-based facts, like statistics, can be misleading when twisted the right way. 

There is no denying that Quebec has done well in its vaccination and public health efforts, but as the world grapples with mutations of a virus that aims to outsmart us, are we to naively believe that this province will be spared because it is Christmas?

Making progress in halting a global pandemic is hardly an excuse for loosening rules, which miraculously coincide with the birth of Jesus. 

If we really want to understand secularism, pay attention to COVID-19, which makes no distinction for any faith in its path of destruction. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus … one multicultural society battling this virus together.

As the candles go out on Chanukah and the Christmas trees light up, let’s be reminded that a secular society caters not to any one faith. Secularism, Mr. Legault, is not a vail for systemic racism.

Susan Mintzberg is a PhD candidate in social work at McGill University. Her research focuses on the role of family caregivers in mental health care.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/12/13/how-the-grinch-stole-chanukah-secularism-is-not-a-vail-for-systemic-racism.html

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Malaysia: ‘Multiculturalism is the country’s prized asset’

2021/12/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

Civil society leaders have rebuked Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s reference to the continued use of chopsticks by the Chinese community to highlight challenges in assimilating the country’s non-Malay population.

Former ambassador Datuk Noor Farida Mohd Ariffin said it was “totally unacceptable” for the former prime minister to criticise the Chinese community for using chopsticks to eat.

“It does not mean that because of this practice, they are unable to assimilate. Is he questioning the loyalty of the Chinese community to the country because of this practice?

“Malaysians of all races use the knife and fork to eat Western food like steaks or lamb chops. Does this mean these Malaysians are unable to assimilate?” she said when contacted yesterday.

Noor Farida, who is the spokesman of the G25 group of eminent former civil servants, said one should not forget the debt of gratitude the country owed to the Chinese Special Branch officers who fought the communists during the insurgency.

“It is a well-documented fact that these police officers infiltrated communist strongholds in the jungle at considerable risk to themselves, and killed many communist insurgents,” she said.

As a leader of a multiracial country, Noor Farida said Dr Mahathir should show greater respect for the cultural practices of all the races in the country.

“There are Chinese living in many other countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. We have never heard of leaders publicly criticising the Chinese community in their countries for using chopsticks,” she added

Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia president Tan Sri Goh Tian Chuan said the Chinese have long integrated into Malaysian society.

“Malaysia is where we were raised and will die. As the second-largest ethnic group in Malaysia, being Malaysian Chinese is our only identity,” he said.

Despite speaking various Chinese dialects and several languages, Goh said national policies and Malaysian law were what bound the Chinese community.

“For a multiracial and multicultural country like Malaysia, diversity and openness are the unique characteristics of our nation,” he said.

On Dr Mahathir’s view that a single-stream education system was best for Malaysia, Goh said the Federal Constitution clearly states and guarantees the country’s existing multi-stream education, including mother-tongue education.

Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Institute of Chinese Studies Assoc Prof Dr Khor Boon Eng said Dr Mahathir’s remarks on assimilation was no longer relevant in terms of multiculturalism.

“In Indonesia, many assimilation policies were scrapped from 1999 on. Since then, the Chinese community there emerged as one of the keenest to learn the Chinese language,” he said, describing the world as a borderless global village.

He added that following China’s opening up, Thailand – which closed Chinese schools during the 1950s – has been encouraging their citizens to learn the Chinese language.Dr Khor said being multicultural was the country’s prized asset “like how it has been said and repeated over time”.

“It is not a bane to racial unity but one that makes us stronger and better,” he added.

Moderation advocate Mohamed Tawfik Ismail pointed out that the use of chopsticks, which was uniquely oriental, does not make anyone alien within a culture, “just as using and forks and spoons did not make a laksa Johor eater a European.”

“Dr Mahathir has overlooked the attractiveness of Malaysia, which is its diversity because historically, it has been a crossroad of cultures and is considered a hub of international trade and commerce.

“There is nothing wrong with anyone looking for the history of their ancestors and it doesn’t make them less loyal to their country.

“There are Malays who have no ancestral ties to the Middle East but seem comfortable adopting the Arabic dress and head covers. Are they less Malay?” he asked.

Source: ‘Multiculturalism is the country’s prized asset’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Multiculturalism in the DDR

2021/12/15 Leave a comment

The East German version of guest workers, with even more limited integration pathways than in West Germany:

When it comes to multiculturalism and post-migrant identity in Germany, the stereotypes have long been fixed: diversity in the West, homogeneous whiteness in the East. But this simplistic picture is beginning to change, as readers grow increasingly interested in eastern narratives about race and migration, both under the Communists and after the Wende. The DDR was, after all, home to thousands of guest workers from ‘brotherlands’ like North Vietnam, Mozambique and Angola, in addition to students and labourers from other Warsaw Pact states.

This month, V&Q Books has released Katy Derbyshire’s translation of the prizewinning Madgermanes by Birgit Weyhe, a beautiful and heart-breaking graphic novel. Its subject is the 20,000 Mozambican guest workers who were brought to the DDR with the promise of opportunity, given boring manual jobs and strictly instructed not to integrate with the locals. Outrageously, the Madgermanes also had a significant cut of their wages withheld – this money was promised to them on return to Mozambique, but it never materialised.

Most Madgermanes did go back – one of the most moving parts of Weyhe’s book depicts former guest workers living in Mozambique but still listening to German radio, showing off DDR railway tickets, or practising their German on anyone who’ll let them. Yet a number of them stayed on after reunification.

So did many people from (North) Vietnam, the most visible migrant demographic in the East. One literary chronicler of the Vietnam-DDR connection is Berlin-based chemist/author Dang Lanh Hoang, who has published extensively about his memories of the Mauerfall – occasionally interweaving his experiences of division and reunification in Vietnam, Germany and Cyprus. Berlin is also home to Pham Thi Hoai, an author and translator who lived in East Berlin from 1977 to 1983 then moved here again in 2000. Her fictional treatments of life in Vietnam – particularly her novel Thien su (‘The Crystal Messenger’), which was banned – have been eagerly received in German translation. A younger generation is represented by figures like Leipzig-based journalist and slam poet Nhi Le, an energetic advocate for the diversity of eastern experiences.

Hopefully diverse stories from the East will keep being published, and keep being translated. Without them, we can only ever have an incomplete understanding of race and identity in post-Wall Germany.

Source: Multiculturalism in the DDR

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

‘If we are not Canadian, what are we?’ How a 2009 law is leaving some children stateless

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Not unexpected but the Act does have a provision to address statelessness. Would be interesting to have the data on the extent of its its application rather than just highlighting individual cases (which highlight issues).

The previous retention provisions were hard to administer consistently and fairly (“substantial connection” not as simple as it sounds), and there are advantages to clarity provided by the first generation limit.

From a policy perspective, the focus was on providing equal treatment for those born in Canada and immigrants who became naturalized Canadians.

And ironic that some expatriate Canadians complain about having to pay for healthcare should they return to Canada to give birth to “restart the clock” when more than a few thousand foreign women do so as “birth tourists.”

But a useful reminder that expatriates need to consider citizenship implications more closely when planning to have children.

After numerous failed attempts to conceive a child, including a lost pregnancy through in vitro fertilization, Emma Kenyon and her husband were grateful and thrilled for the arrival of their first baby.

On Dec. 5, healthy six-pound, two-ounce Darcy was born at a public hospital in Hong Kong. However, a bureaucratic nightmare for his Canadian expatriate parents has just begun.

As new parents, the nursing mother and her husband, Daniel Warelis — both foreign-born Canadian citizens who grew up in Greater Toronto — must fight to find a way to bring their stateless child home.

“I don’t think any country, especially a country like Canada, should allow little babies to be born stateless to Canadian citizens. It’s a travesty,” said Kenyon, 35, who was born in Tokyo while her father was working there for the Bank of Nova Scotia.

“The most important thing for us is that Darcy is not stateless as soon as possible.”

This week, the couple joined five other Canadian families to launch a Charter challenge against a rule in Canada’s citizenship act that denies the transmission of citizenship by descent to these foreign-born kids if both their Canadian parents also happened to be born overseas.

The previous Conservative government changed the law in 2009 and imposed the so-called “second generation” cut-off against Canadians born abroad after Ottawa’s massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in 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.

“Citizenship is about more, far more than a right to carry a passport or to vote. It defines who we are as Canadians, including our mutual responsibilities to one another and a shared commitment to the values that are rooted in our history like freedom, unity and loyalty,” former federal immigration minister Jason Kenney said then.

“That’s why we must protect the values of Canadian citizenship and must take steps against those who would cheapen it.”

Although the law included limited exemptions for children born overseas if their parents are abroad serving in the Canadian military and for the government, critics had warned it would create two tiers of citizenships — those born by birth in Canada and those by descent — and that children of some Canadians might end up stateless.

Now, a generation later, according to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, the impacts of the law passed 12 years ago are felt by Canadians such as Kenyon and Warelis.

“We never imagined, even if there were different rules for second generation Canadians, that two people who are Canadians and grew up in Canada, and there’s no direct pathway for their children to become citizens,” said Warelis, who was born in New York while his father was working there for a global public relations company.

“As time goes on, there will be more and more Canadians who potentially can’t pass on their citizenship,” added the 36-year-old, who worked for the federal government before travelling to Hong Kong for an international career in 2016 with his wife.

“Citizenship is about more, far more than a right to carry a passport or to vote. It defines who we are as Canadians, including our mutual responsibilities to one another and a shared commitment to the values that are rooted in our history like freedom, unity and loyalty,” former federal immigration minister Jason Kenney said then.

“That’s why we must protect the values of Canadian citizenship and must take steps against those who would cheapen it.”

Although the law included limited exemptions for children born overseas if their parents are abroad serving in the Canadian military and for the government, critics had warned it would create two tiers of citizenships — those born by birth in Canada and those by descent — and that children of some Canadians might end up stateless.

Now, a generation later, according to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, the impacts of the law passed 12 years ago are felt by Canadians such as Kenyon and Warelis.

“We never imagined, even if there were different rules for second generation Canadians, that two people who are Canadians and grew up in Canada, and there’s no direct pathway for their children to become citizens,” said Warelis, who was born in New York while his father was working there for a global public relations company.

“As time goes on, there will be more and more Canadians who potentially can’t pass on their citizenship,” added the 36-year-old, who worked for the federal government before travelling to Hong Kong for an international career in 2016 with his wife.

Under the citizenship law in Hong Kong, now part of China, Warelis said his son is ineligible for citizenship by birth on the island because neither he nor his wife are citizens there.

Prior to 2009, the second generation born abroad automatically obtained Canadian citizenship by descent, but ceased to be Canadian citizens at age 28, unless they applied to retain their citizenship and register as a citizen, and either had lived in Canada for at least a year before or established “a substantial connection with Canada.”

However, Ottawa abolished the “substantial connection” regime and replaced it with the second generation cut-off as a blanket rule that denies the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad.

“This case is about modern Canadian families, who are deeply Canadian and have travelled to pursue opportunities to work and study or have fallen in love and had children. And they just want to come home and bring their children with them,” said Sujit Choudhry, lawyer for the litigants.

“And this very blunt law, which is completely unnecessary, is standing in their way.”

The lawsuit — including applicants who currently live in Canada, Dubai, Hong Kong, Japan, and the U.S. — claims the law created two classes of Canadian citizenship: one for Canadians born here and one for Canadians born abroad.

While Canadians born in Canada could pass their citizenship to their children born abroad, Canadians born abroad could not similarly do so.

As a consequence, it argues, the first generation born abroad have a second-class citizenship because of the circumstances of their birth, which “were entirely beyond their control” and which they are powerless to change.

The litigants are asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for an order to rule the second generation citizenship cut-off unconstitutional and that the same citizenship rights be afforded to them and their foreign born kids.

According to the 2016 census, 32 million of Canada’s 34.5 million population were Canadian citizens, including 8.2 million who weren’t born in Canada. Of those, said Choudhry, 183,000 were born abroad and obtained citizenship by descent.

Unlike Canada, he said, in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, the first generation born abroad can themselves pass on citizenship to their kids born abroad if they meet a “substantial connection” requirement, usually satisfied by some period of residence in their home country. The idea is to restrict the indefinite transmission of citizenship abroad by non-resident citizens.

“None of them would have had this blanket ban,” said Choudhry.

Litigant Roy Brooke, who was working for the United Nations in Geneva when he and his wife had their first child in 2010, was unaware of the second generation citizenship cut-off until a year later when he got a letter from immigration officials that his child would have no right to pass on citizenship to offspring born outside Canada.

He said there wasn’t a choice for the family to return to Canada at the time and for the baby to be delivered in the country because, as non-resident Canadians, they had no provincial health insurance here and didn’t have an obstetrician or gynecologist.

Fortunately, Brooke, 51, and his wife, 48, were both born in Ontario — him in Toronto and her in Goderich — and their child was granted Canadian citizenship by descent. The family returned and settled in Victoria, B.C., in 2011 to raise the child in Canada, as the couple had always planned.

Brooke said the second generation cut-off will make it more difficult for his child to follow his and his wife’s footsteps and “must trade off career against family.”

The concern over second class citizenship status for his family and others prompted Brooke to lobby the federal government, reaching out to the offices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the immigration minister for legislative changes to amend the citizenship cut-off rules.

Both former cabinet ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock were on board for the amendment, said Brooke in his affidavit filed in the Charter challenge.

“Everybody that I have spoken to knows that this is a flawed piece of legislation. Everybody knows that this is a legislative overreach. Everyone knows that this is a series of perverse and unintended consequences. Yet here we are,” said Brooke, an executive director of a not-for-profit organization that works on environmental issues.

“It’s going to affect millions of people. And once people start finding out, it’s also going to put a chill on people’s ability and interest in living, travelling and working overseas and all to no purpose.”

While Kenyon and Warelis are still unsure of what future may hold for their newborn, Victoria Maruyama, another litigant, has already had an uphill battle trying to acquire Canadian citizenship for her two children, both born in Japan, where she met her Japanese husband, an Air Force pilot, while she was teaching English there in 2002. The couple married in 2007 and have two kids, both Japanese citizens.

Born in Hong Kong to Vietnamese and Hong Kong parents, Maruyama moved to Canada with her family in 1980 when she was a year old. She got her Canadian citizenship by descent through her father and grew up in Edmonton.

In 2017, she brought her children to Canada on visitors’ visas with the intent to raise them in her homeland. She made a plea to the immigration minister for Canadian citizenship for her kids’ while fighting to get them into public school and access to health care.

When the kids’ visas expired in 2018, they left. A few months later, they returned from Japan just to show the family’s commitment to settle in Canada. After the immigration minister refused her citizenship plea, she applied to sponsor her children to Canada as permanent residents at the advice of immigration officials. They went back to Japan to wait for the decision.

A refusal letter came in early 2020 from an immigration officer, who wrote: I am not satisfied that your sponsor will reside in Canada if a permanent resident visa were to be issued and as a result, it would be contrary to the regulations to issue you a permanent resident visa or allow you to become a permanent resident.

“There is no doubt that I have a substantial connection to Canada. I lived in Canada for 21 years, including my formative years,” sighed Maruyama, who is still teaching English in Tokyo.

“My two younger sisters do not face the same legal restrictions that I do in passing on citizenship abroad because they were born in Canada … Our substantial connection to Canada is the same. I am as Canadian as they are. Yet, they have more rights than I do, simply because of their place of birth.”

Warelis agrees, “If we are not Canadian, what are we? We don’t have another home.”

Source: ‘If we are not Canadian, what are we?’ How a 2009 law is leaving some children stateless

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

‘This is a screwed up system’: frustrated Liberal MPs want to slash immigration processing times

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

Backbench Liberal MPs say they’re frustrated over extended delays in the processing of immigration and citizenship applications and they want new Immigration Minister Sean Fraser to take urgent action to fix the system.

“The entire system is broken down,” said one frustrated Liberal MP who spoke to The Hill Times on not-for-attribution basis in order to offer their candid opinion. “This is a screwed up system.”

MPs interviewed for this story said that for about two years they’ve been hearing that COVID-19 is the main reason for longer application processing times at Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Now, they said, they are being told the delays have been caused by the government’s decision to expedite the applications of 40,000 vulnerable residents of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The MPs said they think the government will come up with another reason for the delays once the Afghan refugees are settled, and their constituents will still have to suffer. They noted that their government has been in power for more than six years and they’ve had four immigration ministers since 2015, including John McCallum, Ahmed Hussen (York South-Weston, Ont.), Marco Mendicino (Marco-Mendicino, Ont.), and now Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.), but “the mess the Stephen Harper Conservatives left in 2015,” in terms of long wait times, is still not fully cleaned up.

Fraser was appointed to the immigration portfolio on Oct. 26. McCallum served as immigration minister from November 2015 to January 2017; Hussen from January 2017 to November 2019; and Mendicino from November 2019 to October 2021.

“They’ve been telling us COVID, COVID, COVID as the reason for the delay,” said a second MP. “Now they’re saying Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan. Who knows, tomorrow there will be something else.”

Some MPs said the “funny thing” is that the department is currently processing student applications or other temporary resident-to-permanent resident applications within a couple of months, compared to other streams of immigration and citizenship that in some cases take years. They said that in the past, one often cited reason for long processing times was the background security checks that alone, in some cases, would take several months or years. It’s hard to understand, they said, how the department now is completing the whole processing process, including background checks, within a couple of months for some applications.

The time to process an application at IRCC depends on whether it’s a family sponsorship, a refugee application, temporary resident permit, economic immigration application or a citizenship application. Also, it depends on whether the sponsored person or the immigration applicant is within Canada or outside of Canada. For example, according to IRCC website, in the case of spousal application, the current  processing time is 12 months. For a parental or grandparent application,  the processing time is 20-24 months. In the case of investor visas, the processing time is 64 months. All applications are not processed within the estimated time offered by the IRCC website.

Based on statistics provided by IRCC, CBC reported recently that as of Oct. 27, the department had a backlog of 1.8 million applications. Of these, the report said, 548,195 were for permanent residency, 775,741 were temporary residence applications, and 468,000 were for citizenship.

Immigration and citizenship issues are top of mind for all MPs representing major urban centres. MPs say that, in some cases, around 90 per cent of the calls they get from their constituents are related to immigration issues. For this reason, almost all MPs in urban centres have one or more staffers in their constituency offices who deal exclusively with these files.

Constituency work plays a critical role in the re-election of every MP. Major urban centres like the GTA and Metro Vancouver play a key role in deciding the outcome of every election. On top of that, MPs say it gives them a morale boost when they are making a difference in their constituents’ lives.

“It [constituency work] is everything, I mean, when I go knock on doors, and hear people give a positive response to recognize my office, especially a certain staff that they got served [by], I get an extra boost in my confidence,” said Liberal MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) in an interview with The Hill Times. “I’m there to serve a purpose and the purpose again is to serve [constituents]. So it’s very important.”

MPs said that in every weekly Liberal regional or national caucus meeting, MPs raise the issue of delays in immigration and citizenship applications with the immigration minister and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.).

Earlier this month, Liberal sources told The Hill Times that a GTA resident, frustrated with problems trying to sponsor his wife and children from a South Asian country, tried to commit suicide by pouring gasoline on himself in front of Liberal MP Judy Sgro’s (Humber River-Black Creek, Ont.) constituency office, but the police arrived on time and stopped the person from doing so.

In an interview Sgro confirmed that the incident had taken place. She said she believed that the person in question had mental health challenges, and the sponsorship of his family was just one of many other issues he was dealing with.

Still, Sgro said, seeing someone pouring a container of gasoline on himself and trying to light himself on fire was a traumatic experience for her staff. At the time of this incident, Sgro was in Ottawa.

“Gasoline was everywhere, the smell of gasoline for my staff was a lot because they were looking at someone who was about to light themselves on fire,” said Sgro. “So it was a very traumatic thing for my staff to go through. I had to close the office for a couple of days until we could clean up some of the fumes and for them to kind of recover from that shock.”

After the incident, Sgro said that House of Commons security visited her constituency office to assess if any measures could be undertaken to improve the security in her office.

Sgro said that she understands the frustration of people who have to wait longer for their family members’ applications to be processed, but she said that certain issues like COVID or the situation in Afghanistan are beyond anyone’s control. So, people will have to be patient.

Meanwhile, in an email to The Hill Times, Alexander Cohen, press secretary to Minister Fraser, said that the global COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected Immigration Canada’s ability to process applications in an efficient manner. He said that since the start of the pandemic, the department has made significant adjustments. Cohen said that the government is investing $800-million to create a new state of the art digital platform that will further improve the efficiency of the department. He added that the government is expecting to welcome 401,000 new permanent residents this year, “the most in Canadian history.”

“One of the very first things we did was implement priority processing for those who need it most, like vulnerable people, family members seeking to reunite and those in essential services.,” said Cohen. “We’ve also added new staff—including 62 new employees at the IRCC office in Sydney NS—to help reunite families faster. These will help us return to the one-year processing standard for spousal sponsorship. We’ve improved technology and digitized more of our operations, and increased the amount of processing happening virtually.”

As for the faster processing of student applications or other temporary residents, he said, it’s a “single time-limited program this year” under which Canada is granting immigration to 90,000 people, including essential healthcare workers and international students who are already in Canada and have the required skills and experience.

Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz (Davenport, Ont.), chair of the informal Liberal Immigration caucus, conceded there were challenges in processing the applications, but added that things have improved since her party first came to power in 2015. She agreed that a lot of work needs to be done but said that since coming to power, the government has made a number of improvements and it will improve even more in the coming months.

“There’s a lot of valid reasons why people are very upset,” said Dzerowicz. “But I will say to you that we’ve made a lot of advances. It’s been unfortunate that we’ve all gone through this COVID. But hopefully in the coming months, days and months, we’ll start seeing some of that cleared up.”

Liberal MP Terry Duguid (Winnipeg South, Man.) agreed: “We have made Minister Fraser aware of some of the challenges we have been facing with immigration cases at the constituency level,” said Duguid in an email. “We know he has listened carefully and have every confidence he will address these issues. COVID is a big factor in the disruption to our systems.”

Dong also echoed the same view, saying that things slowed down at the Immigration Department because of the pandemic, but now it has started to pick up the pace.

“Since the election, things are moving along actually, things are happening,” said Dong. “I get regular reports from the constituency office that some files [that are] outstanding, they’re being resolved. The ministry is getting back to MPs’ offices faster. So I see signs that things are recovering. But the backlog is one of the issues that we share regularly. There are signs things are getting better.”

Rookie Liberal MP Michael Coteau (Don Valley East, Ont.), who in the past served as an Ontario immigration minister, said that like other countries, Canada has to respond to international emergencies, and that put pressure on the immigration system. He said Fraser is committed to fixing the system, and that in the coming months wait times will reduce significantly.

Coteau said that his office gets several calls every day from constituents who need help with immigration cases. He said the callers are always very respectful and understand why the wait times are longer. Since the Sept. 20 election, he said his office has started several hundred immigration files for his constituents, and is trying to help those people.

“It’s the No. 1 issue because that’s 90 per cent of the phone calls we get,” said Coteau.

Source: https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/12/13/this-is-a-screwed-up-system-frustrated-liberal-mps-want-to-slash-immigration-processing-times/333636?utm_source=Subscriber+-++Hill+Times+Publishing&utm_campaign=41b722c1d0-Todays-Headlines-Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8edecd9364-41b722c1d0-90755301&mc_cid=41b722c1d0&mc_eid=685e94e554

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

The Conversation: Native nations are the experts on citizenship

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion regarding elements of Indigenous identity and citizenship. Would be interesting to know how these vary by First Nation and how differences are resolved:

There is a growing movement to identify and call-out people who have fraudulently held positions by claiming indigeneity like Cheyanne Turions, Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimerand Carrie Bourassa. 

The fraudulent claims of indigeneity are so widespread that the term “pretendians” has become part of regular vocabulary. 

On the surface, this seems to align with the interests of Indigenous Peoples, but with the call-outs come underlying components of colonialism. Namely, that Indigenous nations are not being recognized as the authorities when determining indigeneity. 

Genealogy as the only factor

Those quick to call-out are often not clamouring for Indigenous nations’ jurisdiction over citizenship, nor are they demanding “pretendians” be held accountable to Indigenous nations. 

Instead, people like non-Indigenous genealogists are being held out as “experts” on what does or doesn’t make a person Indigenous. 

The result of having genealogy as the only factor is that the dialogue is not centred on Indigenous people as socio-political groups, but racial purity which perpetuates colonial stereotypes of Indigenous identity. 

Understanding what makes a person Indigenous is complex. There are the obvious sources of indigeneity, such as kinship and receiving cultural teachings from Elders and knowledge keepers, that are established at birth and strengthen throughout a person’s life. 

Other customs and traditions include adoption of non-Indigenous people by Indigenous families. Adoption is a long-recognized practice across many nations that has resulted the adoptees learning the language, cultural teachings and values necessary to be a part of that nation. 

Whether an adoption is valid is an issue for the nation into which the person has been adopted in to decide. 

There are also examples of communities who have granted non-Indigenous people full membership, based on criteria that the First Nation has established. Fort Williams First Nation in Ontario made Damien Lee a full member, which means he is entitled to vote in elections, run for office and to benefits provided by the First Nation. 

He grew up on reserve, and while he is non-Indigenous and therefore does not have status according to the Indian Act, the First Nation has exercised its legal jurisdiction over identity and recognized him as a member.

The critical question at the heart of this issue is how to distinguish between fraudulent claims and legitimate ones. The answer lies with the nations. 

Jurisdiction as a human right

As self-governing nations with constitutionally recognized Aboriginal rights, Indigenous people should be the only authority when determining who is part of their nations. It should be based on their own criteria, as it was before the imposition of the Indian Act. And nations should have the jurisdiction to enforce the laws they develop.

With that in mind, Article 33.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognizes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their own customs and traditions.”

Now that Canada has passed legislation setting out a framework for implementing UNDRIP, Indigenous nations need to be recognized as the authority for determining who is Indigenous. UNDRIP does not automatically remove Canadian authority over identity, so the government will need to take action to ensure existing legislation recognizes Indigenous jurisdiction in this area.

Both the Canadian government and non-Indigenous experts need to relinquish the authority they have assumed. A failure to do so will continue the discrimination and systemic violence faced by Indigenous people.

Assimilative policies

Since Confederation, Canada’s assimilative policies have actively worked to strip Indigenous Peoples of their identity and deny Indigenous jurisdiction.

The federal government has dictated who is an “Indian” through the status definition in the Indian Act and recognizes “the Indian Registrar [as] the only authority under the Indian Act who can determine a person’s eligibility for Indian status.”

These policies are discriminatory and have led to the denial of indigeneity based on blood quantum and other arbitrary criteria such as marriage, university education or joined holy orders to the forceful removal of Indigenous children from their families into non-Indigenous homes and residential and day schools.

The result is thousands of Indigenous Peoples being traumatized by not knowing who their families or communities are, making it extremely difficult to reconnect.

The funding policies of the federal government — whereby resources and service delivery are concentrated to status Indians living on-reserve — serve to create and maintain a scarcity mentality that reinforces colonial approaches to identity and undermines self-governance.

If the current trend continues, whereby individuals’ claims to indigeneity are going to be interrogated by non-Indigenous people, based on criteria established by non-Indigenous perspectives, Indigenous Peoples are going to face even greater barriers in reconnecting with their families and communities, and decolonizing efforts will suffer.

A better solution to the issue of fraudulent claims is to support Indigenous nations and their jurisdiction over identity.

This approach aligns with the UNDRIP and supports the right to self-government. Indigenous nations have been the authority on who they are for thousands of years, it is time their jurisdiction over this be recognized. The Conversation

Cheryl Simon is an Assistant Professor in Aboriginal and Indigenous Law at Dalhousie University. Prior to joining Schulich School of Law, Cheryl worked with a rights-implementation organization in New Brunswick and has taught classes on colonizing Mi’kmaw identity.

Source: The Conversation: Native nations are the experts on citizenship

Filed under Aboriginal, Citizenship Tagged with

USA: Southeast Asians are underrepresented in STEM. The label ‘Asian’ boxes them out more

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

The impact of overly broad groupings. In contrast, Canadian visible minorities have 7 groupings of Asian: Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Korean, Japanese, West Asian (but of course, considerable differences within most of these groups):

When Kao Lee Yang received a nomination from her university for the Gilliam Fellowship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and math, she was thrilled. She’s spent years working toward her doctorate in Alzheimer’s research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Yang is Asian American, and more specifically is Hmong American, part of a small minority in the United States with just 327,000 people.

Though the Hmong population in the U.S. is growing, Hmong Americans are still underrepresented in STEM fields and have lower education rates and higher poverty rates overall, compared to the U.S. population at large.

For example, while 24% of all Asians in the U.S. have obtained an additional degree after college, and 13% of all Americans have, just 6% of Hmong Americans have, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2019 analysis of Census Bureau data. To add to that, a very low percentage of Hmong Americans actually go into STEM fields.

That’s why Yang said she was “blindsided” when HHMI emailed her academic adviser saying she wasn’t eligible for the fellowship because she didn’t meet their requirements for who is considered underrepresented.

Though the National Institutes of Health acknowledges that underrepresentation can be determined on a “case by case” basis, people who identify as Asian or white are not seen as underrepresentedin STEM, according to standards set by the NIH.

That means certain fellowships, grant funding and educational opportunities that are meant for underrepresented groups, such as Latino, Black, and Indigenous people, for example, are not always extended toward Asian American applicants. The opportunities are designed to elevate groups who are historically marginalized and make sure STEM workplaces are more inclusive and equitable.

So Yang, who said she has never met another Hmong scientist in her field, said it made no sense to her that she wasn’t considered underrepresented.

“I was dumbfounded,” Yang said. “I did wonder how HHMI came to that determination when I have had such a hard time finding other Hmong American scientists and scientific spaces.”

Yang isn’t the only one who’s experienced the contradictions that come with falling under the broad category of “Asian” in government data collection. Asian Americans have been calling attention to the issue for decades.

Hmong, Vietnamese, Filipino, Laotian, and Cambodian Americans all fall under the broad category of Asian, but their experiences the U.S. when it comes to things like education levels can vary greatly from other Asian groups such as Chinese, Korean, Indian and Japanese. Some South Asian groups such as Bhutanese and Burmese also face lower levels of educational attainment.

Because of the way HHMI looked at Asian Americans as one group, Yang was not considered to be underrepresented — effectively shutting her out from an opportunity that claims to be for someone exactly like her.

Why advocates say more nuanced data is important

“Is every Asian American group underrepresented in higher education? Obviously that’s not the case,” said Janelle Wong, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland and a co-founder of AAPI Data.

“Indian and Chinese students are the largest groups applying to these programs. And while they do often face implicit bias on campuses, they’re not facing systemic exclusion to access to higher education,” Wong said.

Wong has been advocating for data disaggregation in the Asian American community for years.

Disaggregation would involve collecting more specific data on Asian sub-groups so that a person’s country of origin is apparent, rather than just grouping people together from the entire continent. The data would show specifically if someone was Vietnamese American, or Cambodian American, for example, rather than simply classifying them as Asian.

That kind of detail would allow policymakers, health care professionals, educators and even institutions such as the NIH to better examine the nuances of different Asian populations, because different groups have different needs, experiences and beliefs. The same argument has been made for other racial groups, too, particularly Latinos.

Wong said the issue isn’t just about collecting better data — it’s about justice and civil rights, too.

“This is both a data quality issue and a data justice issue,” she said.

She said lumping all Asian Americans together in one racial category effectively reduces the experience of millions of people — not just when it comes to assessing job or educational candidates, but also for anyone trying to understand their political beliefs, education level, incomeinequality and health outcomes as well. For example, data on the broad category of Asian Americans show that a vast majority are Democratic voters. But if the data is further broken down, it reveals that Vietnamese Americans tend to have far more conservative views and more often identify as Republican.

Rachel Sklar, a post-doctorate scholar in environmental health outcomes at the University of California San Francisco, is Filipino and says she has been denied an academic opportunity in the past because she falls under the “Asian American” category.

Sklar said Filipinos in the U.S. experience what’s called “downward intergenerational mobility.” In other words, U.S.-born Filipinos are less likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree than their foreign-born parents. So efforts to boost groups struggling to obtain higher education should apply to Filipinos, Sklar said, but instead they’re hidden in the broader data on Asian Americans and educational achievement.

“The experiences of groups like Filipinos are just erased. They’re deemed invisible,” Sklar said.

More nuanced data could also be helpful to doctors treating Asian American patients, and policy makers making decisions about targeting health resources to different communities.

Sklar points out that Filipino women have high rates of hypertension and diabetes and other risk factors that can impact childbirth.

“Yet, because they’re grouped as Asians, they’re rarely considered for the types of resources that they need for safe birthing and pregnancy,” she said.

Questions of identity, and guilt

The dichotomy of being considered a minority by some institutions, but not by others, is emotionally confusing, as well.

Brittany Boribong, who was nominated to the Gilliam Fellowship in 2018 — the same one Yang was nominated for — had almost the same experience as Yang.

Boribong is Laotian American and the daughter of refugees. She and her brother are the first in her family to go to college, and she is the first to continue her education beyond a bachelor’s degree. While she was getting her doctorate at Virginia Tech, she was nominated by her school for the fellowship.

Like Yang, the fellowship told Boribong she wasn’t eligible. For her, it brought up a wave of guilt, like she was taking up an opportunity from someone else, a feeling she experienced while participating in a different fellowship for underrepresented people in STEM.

“I’m technically Asian American,” she said, but she couldn’t help thinking, “Do I belong here? Am I taking someone else’s spot? … I always felt like I snuck my way in, that I shouldn’t have been there.”

Being told by the Gilliam Fellowship that she wasn’t eligible was embarrassing, Boribong said, and it was the first time she had been told so bluntly she wasn’t underrepresented.

“I just look around the room and it’s like, where are the other Lao scientists? If I’m not considered a minority, then where are we?”

She and her advisor had to then go through the process of making a case that Boribong is underrepresented. Eventually, they did allow her nomination through, but it pushed her away from applying to other fellowships at HHMI.

There are growing calls for changing the way we collect data

Collecting more specific data about Asian Americans is something scholars and activists have been calling on for years, and it’s been picking up traction.

In November, lawmakers in New York re-upped their legislation calling for disaggregation of data on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was presented with the same bill before he resigned from office but refused to sign it into law, citing logistical and financial issues of having to create new, uniform methods of collecting data, which is the most common opposition to data disaggregation. Others who have opposed efforts to disaggregate data have also cited privacy concerns, particularly related to immigrant communities, or said that it could divide different Asian groups.

But advocates of the law have pushed back against those concerns and are now asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign it into law.

“Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in New York represent 30+ different ethnicities and speak numerous languages. Failing to record & report that diversity is harmful,” State Sen. Julia Salazar, who co-sponsored the bill, tweeted.

When it comes to STEM academia in particular, the push for change has been incremental. Both Sklar and Boribong hadn’t realized how many others had gone through the same experience until Yang tweeted about her experience in October.

Elevating the conversation, though, might lead to some change. After Yang’s tweet spread on social media and after being questioned by NPR about their process of determining who is underrepresented, HHMI has updated their standards.

As of Nov. 12, the fellowship now said it recognizes “there are other ethnic populations who might be underrepresented but who are not currently designated as such by the federal government” and will “continue to consider” how they can better determine underrepresentation in STEM.

They’ve also extended the opportunity to Yang and a few others to complete their application, but Yang said she will not be moving forward with the process.

The larger problem that Sklar points out is that many other fellowships in STEM academia still take their guidance on diversity and representation from the NIH. The NIH, when asked by NPR, said they are required to take their guidance on race and ethnicity from the 1997 standards of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

But the OMB standards that same year also said the racial and ethnic groups that are outlined are a minimum base for gathering data, so agencies can go into further detail if they choose to. The Department of Health and Human Services guidance also said agencies are encouragedand can go into further detail. Plus, in 2012, a report to the NIH director outlined concerns about the lack of disaggregated data when it came to minority groups, specifically Latinos.

Sklar said if the NIH doesn’t change their process, she doesn’t expect much to change. In the meantime, she is focusing on what she can control: choosing to disaggregate the data she uses in her own scientific research.

For her, showing the vast differences in the Asian American population in her own research is proof in itself that the same should happen on a wider scale.

“The research needs to come first,” Sklar said, “And show that, ‘Wow, look at these experiences we’ve been making invisible just by glossing over and assuming a very heterogeneous group is actually homogeneous.'”

Source: Southeast Asians are underrepresented in STEM. The label ‘Asian’ boxes them out more

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Wiseman: Redistributing seats in the House of Commons

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Punchy commentary:

When governments redistribute seats in the House of Commons, they often claim they are doing what the public wants or acting in the interests of fairness. When Mike Harris’ Conservative government reduced the number of MPPs at Queen’s Park in 1996, they labelled their bill the Fewer Politicians Act. When Stephen Harper’s Conservatives increased seats in the Commons in 2011, they branded their bill the Fair Representation Act. To be consistent, Jim Flaherty, John Baird, and Tony Clement, senior cabinet ministers in both governments, ought to have termed their federal bill the More Politicians Act.

As required by law and shifts in the population, Elections Canada has determined that the House ought to expand by four seats, from 338 to 342, adding three seats for Alberta, one each for Ontario and British Columbia, and reducing Quebec’s seats by one, from 78 to 77.

By entering your email address you consent to receive email from The Hill Times containing news, analysis, updates and offers. You may unsubscribe at any time. See our privacy policy

Rather than constantly enlarging the House as two acts of Parliament require—the 1985 grandfather clause and the 2011 representation rule—Parliament ought to keep to the constitutional principle established at Confederation: proportionate provincial representation. The only exception is the “senatorial clause,” added to the Constitution by Westminster in 1915, entitling provinces to no fewer MPs than Senators. Changing that rule requires the unanimous consent of the provinces and Parliament, an impossibility.

Parliament ought to repeal both the “grandfather clause” and the “representation rule.” Neither required the consent of provinces and neither requires provincial consent for revocation. Parliament should also consider reducing and fixing a permanent number of seats. If the United States can manage with 435 Congressional representatives for 334 million people, 250 MPs ought to be sufficient to represent Canada’s 38 million people. MPs fearful of losing their jobs will argue that they are essential to serving their constituents, but more constituency staff could easily do that.

MPs are elected to represent their constituents and the parties under whose banners they run. They are not elected to represent provinces. Senators are appointed to represent provincial interests. Premiers do it especially well. But premiers have no more business in the redistribution of Commons seats than the prime minister has in how seats are distributed in a province. The idea that MPs represent their province holds no water. If it did, MPs would vote along provincial lines. The reality is they vote strictly along party lines. What constituents or provincial legislatures prefer is secondary to the preferences of party whips.

The Bloc Québécois makes much of the fact that Parliament has recognized Quebec as a nation. Quebec Premier François Legault claims “the nation of Quebec deserves a certain level of representation” regardless of its population. This begs some questions including: Should Quebec’s First Nations be entitled to a certain level of representation in the National Assembly regardless of their population since the assembly has assigned the status of “nation” to eleven provincial aboriginal groups including the Inuit, Mohawk, Cree, Algonquin, and Naskapi? Carrying Quebec’s brief, Yves-François Blanchet, whose BQ rejected the 1992 Charlottetown Accord which guaranteed Quebec 25 per cent of Commons seats in perpetuity, is outraged at the prospect of his province losing a seat. He has promised to unleash the “fires of hell” if it does.

Pure laine (dyed in the wool) or de souche (old-stock) francophones may claim to be a nation, but Quebec is merely a territory. Stephen Harper’s description of the Québécois is appropriate: “a unique people bonded together by a common language, culture and history—a nation.” However, increasing numbers of Quebecers, like provincial Liberal leader Dominique Anglade, do not fit that definition. Mordechai Richler, whose writings are set in the province, was dismissed as “not one of us” and not a “real Quebecer” by the co-chair of Quebec’s Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Quebec. Jacques Parizeau infamously articulated the distinction between the Québécois de souche and other Quebecers when he declared that “money and the ethnic vote” had determined the outcome of Quebec’s 1995 referendum.

Bloc Québécois founder Lucien Bouchard claimed, “Canada is not a real country” on account of its multicultural complexion, and Quebec’s governments have rejected Canada’s multiculturalism policy. Quebec is certainly not a country and if it can make the claim to nationhood, why should not Saskatchewan? Yes, the French fact makes Quebec—the only jurisdiction on the continent where a majority are francophones—distinctive in a way that Saskatchewan is not, but the language of nationhood is inappropriate for both.

If Quebec must have more MPs than to which it is entitled, let Parliament adopt another feature of the United States Congress: non-voting members. All provinces, except Newfoundland and Labrador and British Columbia, have lost seats in the past. Quebec is a cry baby in demanding overrepresentation and the federal political parties are too eager to cater to its howls.

Nelson Wiseman is the author of Partisan Odysseys: Canada’s Political Parties(University of Toronto Press).

Source: Redistributing seats in the House of Commons

Filed under Politics Tagged with , , ,

Paradkar: Why I’m saying bye-bye to ‘BIPOC’ this year

2021/12/13 Leave a comment

While Paradkar’s points are valid when applied to the individual, groups are needed to assess differences in socio-economic outcomes at a broader level and understand the degree to which these reflect systemic or other barriers.

As Joseph Heath has argued, we need to stop using the American term BIPOC given that it reflects the centrality of Blacks in American history and exclusion, and use terms more appropriate to Canada’s history and context.

Needless to say, discussing terminology is easier than dismantling barriers and improving inclusion:

Who on earth is a BIPOC person?

BIPOC is an acronym that has flared into public consciousness since the 2020 summer of protests against police brutality against Black people. It stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour and was quickly pronounced bye-pock.

I thought it held some promise then. It appeared to be a thoughtful political coalition term, acknowledging disparate impacts of white supremacy by singling out Black and Indigenous experiences, even though both “Black” and “Indigenous” are homogenizing identities in themselves, and not always disparate.

When it comes to police brutality, we’re not all in it together. Black and Indigenous people are treated more unjustly than just about anyone else in our criminal justice system. Other people are treated with disdain, but that contempt often stems from anti-Black, colonial ideas of refinement and race.

However, as with POC or person of colour, BIPOC got swallowed up, quickly lost nuance and got spat out at a racial identifier to say “not white.”

Colonized lands that grapple with human rights face a perpetual puzzle: What to name “the other” without saying “the other?” It has led to a long-standing tension on this continent, a tension between a racial identity and a political one, a tension between the labels white people want to apply versus how people identify themselves.

In Canada that desire for euphemistic framing has translated into various terms over the years. “Coloured,” “minority,” “diverse”. They bunch into one box people held together by the most tenuous of all connections, that of not being of European origin.

Words matter, and they are tricky. They swim in the sociological waters around them, meaning one thing at one point in time and something else the next.

Those sociological realities have now claimed the term BIPOC like they do other racial designations that are rooted not just in history but also prejudice.

I had never been called “East Indian” until I came to Canada. If anything I identified as South Indian, as in one who lived in the southern part of the country. Then I began to be called South Asian, another label I’d never heard before. It instantly flattened the vast diversity of all the nations on the Indian subcontinent into one homogeneous lump, but at least it was a geographical descriptor.

I then came across another widely used term: POC, or person of colour. It sounded a bit like “coloured people,” which I didn’t know then was a slur. I assumed it simply referred to the fact of melanin in my skin.

POC became more of a political identity over time when it bonded me with those who experienced similar responses to our non-European origins, including East Asians. In other words, when I underwent the process of racialization or the process of being forced to see that I was categorized as a certain “race” and feel its impacts. This, even though race itself is anthropological fiction, constructed as a tool of exploitation.

Early 1900s U.S. state laws defined a person of colour as one with some “Negro blood,” but in contemporary Canada at least, the term POC erased Black experiences and kept invisible Indigenous ones. The grassroots advocacy for change came from those groups, but its biggest beneficiaries have always been white women, followed by other people of colour. When the fight for civil rights in the U.S. led to the creation of “affirmative action” laws — or a push for corporations and universities to end discrimination — white women over decades received a far higher share of managerial jobs and degrees.

POC was supposed to be a collaborative term. But even when reduced to an identity, it was more positive than non-white, which sounded like a deficit, an accusation of something lacking.

It was also better than the revolting “visible minority,” which made no sense. Visible to whom? How does it account for those that might be “invisible” but still in the margins, such as First Nations, Métis and Inuit? There is also an irony in naming a global majority a “minority,” but more than that, colonization globally has showed that numerical domination has nothing to do with power.

In a city like Toronto where the presence of “visible minorities” causes white flight, statistics showing that it is populated by a visible “majority” causes white fright, and spawns far-right white grievance ideologies in the rest of the country.

Words are not the solution, but yes, they matter.

That’s why I heard alarm bells ringing when a corporate executive said BIPOC stats had gone up in their staff demographics, but a closer look revealed there were no Indigenous hires.

Emails from publicists began routinely throwing up lines like these: BIPOC founder behind (XYZ) coffee shop. BIPOC sommelier breaks barriers on wine’s role.

At a discussion on online harassment, a white woman described another woman at the receiving end of abuse saying, “And she’s bye-pawk. She’s bye-pawk.”

How does an individual become BIPOC?

In that moment I realized I’d gone from being Indian to being South Asian to be a person of colour to now being either Black or Indigenous and a Person of Colour. In the span of a few years, my identity had been diluted beyond recognition. This absolute homogenization is the opposite of what the term BIPOC was meant to do.

It’s true that some people are simply anxious to keep up with the terminology to signal support for anti-racism, but when they do so without paying attention to the nuance of those terms, and flatten our identities and conflate the unique struggles of different groups, they replicate the problem the terminology is trying to eradicate.

I am done. Bye, bye BIPOC.

In my work I opt to use individuals’ own preference for identities and describe backgrounds as specifically as I can. I’ve also deliberately used non-white, not as a racial identity, but to emphasize experiences of people who are penalized for not being white. I quite like the term “racialized” although plenty of people of colour have not awoken to their own racialization and plenty of white people have. I realize that “racialized,” too, is used as another word for “not white.” But like “marginalized” — an even bigger umbrella term — it at least insists on being seen as a process.

Several months ago, NPR journalist Gene Demby referenced the linguistic term “euphemism treadmill” on the podcast Code Switch. It’s a term that refers to polite words, softer words used to replace those that might give offence. But over time, these euphemisms become toxic by association and themselves need to be replaced. Demby pointed to words such as Oriental, Coloured or Negro that were all proper terms at some point.

“The terminology can only stay ahead of the negative attitudes for only so long,” he said presciently. “The problem is not the language we use to refer to people. The problem is the attitude we have when referring to those people.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/12/11/why-im-saying-bye-bye-to-bipoc-this-year.html

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →