How do we improve our immigration system post-pandemic?

2021/08/09 Leave a comment

More general than useful, more promotional than substantive:

After the slowdown in immigration during COVID-19, the Canadian government has announced it intends to ramp up immigration targets, especially in the permanent resident category, for the next few years. 

How do we make sure that we “build back better” in terms of our immigration policy? 

In attempting to find answers to this question, WINS undertook a survey in February to March of 2021 called Showcasing Immigrant Voices to understand the experience of immigrants in Canada. 

Among our respondents, a quarter had a bachelor’s degree and close to two-thirds a master’s degree or higher. Close to three-quarters reported that their first position in Canada was entry level, whereas before immigration, under a fifth had entry level jobs. 

Close to a half found their job search far more difficult than expected. More than a quarter were still job searching after 12 months or more after moving to Canada. A “lack of Canadian work experience” was commonly cited as a major hurdle, with a third also reporting what they believed to be “discrimination in the hiring process.” 

This data, coupled with data from secondary sources that we collected for our survey report, showed that the challenges immigrants face have not changed in over a decade. All this compelled us to ask: why has nothing changed? Isn’t it time it did? This led us to reflect on how we can help to bring about change.

The sad truth is that the survey results merely confirm what we have heard from many immigrants we talk to every day and something that the Ontario government realizes as well. 

A recent provincial news release noted that more than 170,000 internationally trained immigrants in the province are working in jobs that do not match their level of qualification. This does not include those who are underemployed or dropped out of the labour force. The release also noted that the Ontario Bridge Training Program is providing $14 million over three years to help 2,698 internationally trained professionals access the labour market.

Such announcements raise an obvious question: Does spending $5,000 per spot for re-education of a very small minority of underemployed internationally trained immigrants make sense? The present government approach has continued for a long time but the problem remains. 

We believe there is a better strategy.

We recommend that Canadian stakeholders collaborate on bringing about a paradigm shift toward integrating immigrants into the Canadian workforce. The main players in this shift need to be governments, employers and Canadians at large.

Governments should shift funds toward employment-focused programs that help those already here get jobs that match their skills. As noted by the Conference Board of Canada, we need to deal with long-standing barriers to economic integration, especially now that we have seen how these barriers impeded immigrants during COVID-19, and this has been a major barrier. 

Stricter regulations are also needed around discrimination based on Canadian experience. Meanwhile, more attention has to be given to revamping the federal skilled occupation list to match the reality of the current labour market. 

Employers have a role to play as well. They must refine a set of best practices for HR professionals and provide training to shift their focus from immigrants’ supposed “lack” to the positive contributions that immigrants, with their transferable skills, can make. Through a realization of just how much Canadian experience serves as a systematic barrier, employers can improve the prospects of immigrant talent already here in Canada.

Finally, all Canadians must understand the challenges that immigrants face. That means reflecting on what kind of society is produced when a portion of its members are constantly devalued and their capabilities undermined by existing programs and prejudices. Immigrants’ patriotism and sense of belonging can be fully realized only when they feel fully valued members of Canadian society.

Dr. Hitu Sood is a diversity and HR consultant and the founder and executive director of Winning Inclusive Solutions (WINS), a not-for-profit based in Toronto. Mark Lovewell is the chair of the board of WINS. Veronica Seeto is the vice-chair of the board of WINS.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/08/04/how-do-we-improve-our-immigration-system-post-pandemic.html

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Restaurants and stores say government aid is to blame for a labour shortage — but the hard data tells a different story

2021/08/09 Leave a comment

Of note, given current discussions on whether our immigration system needs to be rebalanced towards the lower skilled and paid:

Relaxed health rules are allowing thousands of restaurants and stores to reopen. But employers are already complaining they can’t find enough workers, especially in hospitality and retail. Some are offering signing bonuses, redistributing tips and making other special efforts to attract staff.

Employers like to point the finger at government income supports that helped people through the pandemic, like emergency recovery benefits (now extended to October) and expanded eligibility for EI payments. Employers complain these programs reduce the incentive to accept low-wage, irregular work in restaurants and shops. Many also want Ottawa to expand the Temporary Foreign Worker program, so they can access low-cost labour from other countries.

To be sure, it is an operational headache for restaurants and stores to reconnect with former employees after months of closure, and they’re all trying to do this at the same time. But the hard data does not support the claim of a generalized labour shortage.

After all, unemployment remains elevated: the latest Statistics Canada reportpegged the official rate at 7.5 per cent. And other pools of hidden unemployment (including people working very short hours, and people who left the labour force during the pandemic) push the true unemployment rate towards 15 per cent.

Wages in stores and restaurants remain very low, and are not rising, which should happen if labour was genuinely scarce. In hospitality, for example, the median wage is $15 per hour (barely matching the legal minimum in many provinces), and average weekly earnings are just $500 per week (reflecting inadequate hours of work as well as low wages).

There is no sign wages are improving, despite anecdotes in the media. To the contrary, wages have grown more slowly in retail and hospitality than the overall economy since the pandemic. Thus the wage penalty for workers in these sectors is getting worse, not better.

When your industry offers less than half the going wage, you shouldn’t be surprised you have trouble attracting workers. That’s like me offering $100,000 for a Lamborghini (less than half the list price), and then crying shortage when no-one will sell me one.

It’s no mystery how to recruit and retain a more stable workforce: offer better pay, stable shifts, decent benefits, and improved training and safety. Inadequate and irregular hours are actually a bigger disincentive than low hourly wages (almost half of hospitality staff work part time). Reorganizing schedules to allow predictable shifts and more full-time roles would support genuine career opportunities in these industries, rather than a culture of lousy precarious work.

Other countries have shown that service sector work can offer stable middle-class career paths. Canada could do the same, but only if we prevent employers from taking the easy out — namely, providing them with still more desperate workers willing to work for any wage. If governments respond to complaints about a labour shortage by cutting income supports or importing migrant labour, that will only short-circuit the improvements in job quality these sectors ultimately need.

Only once did Canada’s economy truly run out of workers. That was during the Second World War, when a massive, government-funded war effort ended the Depression and put every able worker into a productive job. We aren’t anywhere near that situation today, but we could be, if we wanted to. We could launch an ambitious post-COVID national reconstruction plan, featuring massive and ongoing investments in green energy, affordable housing, and human and caring services. That would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, end mass unemployment and improve living standards in the process.

But creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs is actually the last thing low-wage employers want. That would only make it all the harder for them to recruit cheap, desperate labour.

In sum, there’s no “labour shortage” in Canada today, nor is one on the horizon. Governments should ignore these phoney complaints, and instead encourage employers to respond to staffing problems like any other hard-to-find commodity. When something is truly scarce, smart businesses find ways to use less of it (in this case through automation and efficiency measures). They emphasize quality over quantity. And, at the end of the day, they pay more.

In the long run, this will drive productivity growth, innovation and better jobs. And that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work in Vancouver, is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @jimbostanford

Source: Restaurants and stores say government aid is to blame for a labour shortage — but the hard data tells a different story

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ICYMI: Now more than ever, political platforms should be built on the foundation of a long-term policy framework

2021/08/09 Leave a comment

Irrespective of one’s political leanings or whether one agrees with the specific recommendations, it would be nice if elections and politics provided space for more serious policy discussions with respect to longer-term issues, not just the productivity and investment issues highlighted here.

Ironically, their focus on productivity and GDP per capita raises questions regarding the increased immigration levels of the government.

The challenge, however, is how to do so given political party positioning, social media soundbites and the difficulty of doing so:

When presenting their policy platforms in the federal election we’re all expecting soon, political parties may be tempted to focus on capturing headlines. Resisting short-termism is not easy in the current era of growing populism and focus-group-driven politics, but the stakes for our country’s economic future are high.

We’re coming out of an unprecedented (and unsustainable) period of fiscal expansion to alleviate the economic ravages of a global pandemic. In addition, we face long-standing challenges including rapid technological transformation, climate change, aging demographics, changing geopolitical dynamics and more than a decade of secular stagnation. Now more than ever, political platforms should be built on the foundation of a long-term policy framework.

Progress is a choice. It doesn’t happen on its own. From 1945 to 1975, Canadians saw their average real weekly earnings grow at a rate that more than doubled every 28 years. This amazing level of economic growth came in large part as a result of policy choices we made as a country. There was intentionality on what we were trying to achieve together. We need a renewed commitment to our long-term economic future.

Political platforms should be formed based on long-term economic objectives with platform commitments reflecting their potential impact on those objectives. Critically, a strong accountability mechanism, such as a review of outcomes relative to commitments by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, would hold the ruling party accountable to its promises.

Which economic objectives should take priority? Here are two that could have a significant impact:

Real median per-capita income should rise by at least 5 per cent over every five-year period. This may not seem particularly ambitious, but in the five years leading up to 2019 (the most recent data available) median per-capita income only rose 3.4 per cent. Since 2009, there have only been three years in which the rolling five-year window has seen growth of 5 per cent or more. Focusing on median per-capita income ensures that the gains from growth are shared broadly across the population rather than benefiting only a few. To achieve this, policies would need to demonstrate how they plan to sustainably raise growth and improve labour-market outcomes for all segments of the population. We need a shift from consumption spending to greater focus on productive investments: applied public R&D in fast-growing sectors, child care, reskilling workers for the digital economy and helping our resource sector transition to a low-carbon future. Evaluating performance over a five-year window would allow for inevitable cyclical variations that can lead to large annual swings.

Commit to halving the investment gap with OECD countries. There is a well-known and well-documented lack of business investment in machinery, equipment and intellectual property in Canada. There are of course many firms that invest a lot, but by and large economy-wide data consistently show that Canada ranks near the bottom of the pack among members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. In relation to GDP, business investment of this type is barely more than half what it is in the United States, and just under two-thirds of what it is in the average OECD country. Moreover, as the C.D. Howe Institute notes, Canadian business investment per available worker also badly lags that in the U.S. and other OECD countries. This underperformance in business investment directly contributes to our poor productivity performance, and loss of competitiveness. It is no coincidence that Canada’s export competitiveness weakened in recent years as its share of the U.S. market declined. Over the past two decades, Canadian exports have risen at just half the pace of the overall economy.

In addition, while the United States and the United Kingdom are making ambitious moves on advanced industries and increasing their R&D investments, Canada’s approach is still tentative. In an economy increasingly dependent on intangible assets such as data and digital services, innovation will be a key driver of growth. Building Canada’s sectoral capabilities in advanced (or innovation) industries is becoming paramount. These industries encompass technology at its broadest and most consequential. High productivity ensures that the average worker employed in an advanced industry earns a yearly wage nearly 50 per cent higher than the average Canadian worker.

If pursued, these objectives would represent bold and firm commitments to sustainably raising our standard of living. Parties may of course disagree on the means to achieve them, but they can hardly ignore them. The policy choices that we make in the next few years will shape the Canada of 2050, and our country’s standing in the global economy.

Jean-François Perrault is Scotiabank’s chief economist and a former assistant deputy minister at the Department of Finance. Robert Asselin is senior vice-president of policy at the Business Council of Canada and former policy adviser to two prime ministers.

Source: Now more than ever, political platforms should be built on the foundation of a long-term policy framework

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Savory & Partners advise on investment migration to empower women all around the globe

2021/08/07 Leave a comment

I always enjoy sharing these promotional puff pieces, this one with a new shameless tack of “empowering women:”

The 21st century may not be a utopian era when it comes to gender equality, but it is slowly getting better; we are seeing more women leaders, high-ranking politicians, academics, professionals, CEOs, and more.

Women are playing an immense role in driving change and evolution throughout our communities, and as more companies, households, and communities are run by women, it is only logical they seek the tools necessary to do so – enter investment migration.

Women empowerment through investment migration is a two-phase process. The first phase comes in the form of the decision-making process when considering investing in investment migration. The second phase is using it to enhance their success.

The Decision-Making Process

As someone looking to invest in global mobility assets such as a European Union residency or a new passport from the Caribbean or Turkey, it is essential that this venture is thought through to ensure they and their family gain maximum benefits from the second citizenship.

Savory & Partners can help by giving the best options available, but it is up to individuals to ultimately decide what it is their family needs, what tools any children require to fulfil their potential, and what option suits a person’s lifestyle most.

Studies show that women have great cross-signalling when it comes to the thought process, which enables them to get a better holistic view of matters and predict how any given decision can affect the people involved. That wholesome view is greatly needed in the decision-making process when considering investing in residency by investment or citizenship by investment, and it is that mindset that can greatly benefit your entire family.

Mothers have a huge role to play, as getting the right type of residency by investment or citizenship by investment is critical for the future of the family. Kids may attend the best universities in the fields they desire, they may find better work opportunities, and families can rely on a second home as a Plan B in case of any political turmoil back home. Considering children is key in deciding which residency or citizenship by investment program suits a family the most.

Enhancing Success

Succeeding in today’s corporate world is no simple feat, be it for a man or a woman, yet we see an abundance of women CEOs and Presidents throughout the global business landscape.

Managing a business or career can be a daunting task, but luckily, investment migration can make it a lot easier. Many savvy investors pursue residency or citizenship by investment to elevate their global mobility and create a stronger foundation upon which to expand their business.

Getting a residency by investment in Portugal, for example, allows women to expand their business into the EU market, taking advantage of one of the world’s highest-functioning economic areas. Gaining Portugalresidency through the Portugal Residency by Investment Program, dubbed the golden visa, also leads to Portuguese citizenship, which can open up even more opportunities for global business.

While obtaining a second passport from, say, Dominicasignificantly improves global mobility capacity, allowing visa-free travel to the world’s hottest economic hubs such as the United Kingdom, EU, Singapore, Hong Kong, and more.

Women are making their way to the top of the business ladder, and investment migration can help them take their success from a local stage to a global one. Choosing the right country to boost a business is critical, but investment migration does give an abundance of choices. From residency in Spain, the highest-ranking EU country in terms of female CEOs, or citizenship of St. Lucia, where female managers (57.3%) are more common than their male counterparts (42.7%).

“Being the Managing Director and a mother of two beautiful boys, balancing both my roles, I see the need to increase awareness of second citizenship amongst women.” – Helena Savory, Managing Director of Savory & Partners.

But investment migration is not just about running a global business, it is a great way to protect assets. The number of high net worth women (HNWW) is increasing worldwide. Forbes World’s Billionaire List (The Richest 2021) included 328 women, a 60% increase on last year, and women must also protect their wealth against corrosive taxation and economic instability.

Residency by investment and citizenship by investmentallow people to diversify an asset base by moving wealth into secure offshore banks in common law countries such as St. Kitts & Nevis, or by pursuing real estate in hot property locations like Lisbon or Athens.

This diversification means wealth can be safeguarded against uncertainty, securing a fund for a rainy day in an accessible location.

Our Mission of Women Empowerment

We at Savory & Partners understand and value the role of women in the community, especially that our Managing Director is a mother of two, and considering our team consists of ambitious, intelligent, and driven women.

When you come in to find the best citizenship or residency by investment options for you and your family, we can understand your objectives, pain points, and reasoning, and we can provide you with a portfolio of solutions that address them perfectly.

We are playing our role in empowering women within our own business, but we are also aiming to empower more through our high-end solutions.

Savory & Partners is an accredited agent for multiple governments where citizenship by investment is offered. Founded in 1797, the agency has evolved from pharmaceuticals to family assets and legacy protection through second citizenship and residency. The company’s professional, multinational staff is made up of expert advisors who have guided thousands of clients, including many North African investors, on their journey to find the most suitable CBI program for them. The Savory & Partners team will be happy to answer your enquiries in English, Arabic and French.

Source: Savory & Partners advise on investment migration to empower women all around the globe

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Australia’s state parliaments lagging on racial and cultural diversity, report finds

2021/08/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

Australia’s state parliaments are lagging behind in racial and cultural diversity compared with the populations they represent, according to a new analysis.

While approximately 21% of Australians have non-European ancestry, according to a 2018 report from the Australian Human Rights Commission, only 10% of Victorian state MPs and 9% of NSW MPs have non-European ancestry, not including Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ancestry.

This is far lower than comparable state or sub-national parliaments in the UK or Canada, according to Osmond Chiu, a research fellow at the Per Capita thinktank.

In Canada, 23% of MPs in the Ontario parliament – the country’s most populous province – are of a visible minority, and 18.3% in the British Columbia parliament. This is compared with 29.3% of Ontario’s general population having non-European ancestry, and 30.3% in British Columbia.

Grassroots members in NSW Labor have argued that the party must increase the diversity among its MPs or lose electoral ground. A cross-factional group propose inserting a clause into the party’s platform at the upcoming NSW state conference, recognising the under-representation.

The motion argues that a lack of representation is an electoral issue for Labor as the Coalition has made significant ground campaigning in more diverse communities, especially in western Sydney.

Chiu told Guardian Australia that previously-safe Labor seats in Sydney had been won by Liberal MPs in recent years as part of a concerted strategy from the Coalition.

“There is a belt of multicultural marginal seats in Sydney that will determine government at a state and federal level,” he said. “They were once Labor-held seats but were lost to the Liberals who spent more than a decade focusing on culturally diverse voters in these seats.

“As Australia becomes more diverse, other seats will be at risk if Labor does not take the growing cultural diversity of the electorate seriously when the Liberals clearly do.”

Chiu said that under-representation was also an issue for the Liberal, National and other parties, not just Labor.

“However, there’s been an assumption that Labor does better because of its historic support for multiculturalism,” he said. “The reality is in some ways the Liberals are ahead of Labor. For example, there currently are two state and territory Liberal leaders, Gladys Berejiklian and Elizabeth Lee, with non-European ancestry versus none for Labor.”

In the United Kingdom, the London Assembly is 32% BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) compared with 40.6% of London. Scotland and Wales’s populations are far less diverse than Australia, but their parliaments are comparatively more diverse than Australia’s parliaments, according to the Per Capita research.

In Scotland, 4.5% of MSPs are BAME compared with 5% of the population. In Wales, 5% of MSs are BAME compared with 5.6% of the population.

The change to be tabled at the NSW Labor conference states that the party “recognises the ongoing under-representation of culturally and linguistically diverse people in senior leadership positions across business, politics, government and higher education”.

It adds that NSW Labor should be “committed to improving the representation of culturally and linguistically diverse people across all organisations and institutions, including within the party”.

Nearly 50 party units across NSW have endorsed the change to the party platform, with more than 300 party members signing a petition, according to Chiu.

Source: Australia’s state parliaments lagging on racial and cultural diversity, report finds

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Kidd: Boycotting the next Olympics in Beijing will hurt athletes: Here’s a better idea [no, its not]

2021/08/07 Leave a comment

More naiveté regarding China and the IOC. Ironically, Kidd’s example of the 1936 Berlin Olympics underlines the weakness of his proposed approach:

With the Tokyo Olympics coming to an end, human rights activists are expected to step up their campaign against the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing in protest against the genocide of the Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking people in Xinjiang, the colonization of Tibet and the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong. They will call upon the International Olympic Committee to cancel or move the Games that start in just six months, and if that fails, they’ll urge athletes to boycott. 

As frightening as those human rights abuses are, they’re not likely to persuade the IOC or athletes to change their plans for Beijing. Cancelling, moving or boycotting the Beijing Olympics runs counter to the very purpose and history of the Olympic movement and places athletes in an untenable position.

Choosing a different strategy

Given the almost constant tensions in world politics and international sports, boycotts and threats of boycotts have almost been an accepted feature of the modern Olympics. The first occurred at the inaugural Games in Athens in 1896, when German gymnasts known as “turners” refused to participate because most of the events were British sport.

There have been feminist boycotts (British women stayed away from Amsterdam in 1928 when the IOC reneged on its promise to add 10 women’s events to the athletics program), podium protests against racism (Tommie Smith, John Carlos and other U.S. athletes in 1968), so-called recognition boycotts (Taiwan left in 1976 when the IOC refused to call it the “Republic of China”), anti-apartheid boycotts (29 African and Caribbean teams walked out of the Montreal Olympics in 1976 to protest a New Zealand rugby tour of apartheid South Africa) and Cold War boycotts in 1956, 1980, 1984 and 1988.

In 1936, an international coalition of socialists, labour unions and churches not only mounted a highly visible boycott campaign against the staging of the Games in Nazi Germany, but tried to hold a counter-Olympics in Barcelona. It was only cancelled when the Spanish general Francisco Franco led an armed attack upon the city on the morning of the opening ceremonies, starting what became the bitter, three-year Spanish Civil War.

While the Olympic movement is not indifferent to human rights, it seeks to bring representatives of every community in the world together for peaceful dialogue and sports — recognizing that there are very real political and ideological differences among nations.

To build such a big, inclusive tent, it makes few demands upon National Olympic Committees, the international federations that govern the sports or the host countries. It’s the sporting equivalent of the long-held principle of “non-intervention” in the internal affairs of nation states.

As the world has begun to contemplate the obligation of the international community to safeguard citizens from an abusive national state, activists are calling on the IOC to apply and enforce human rights upon National Olympic Committees, federations and host countries. That battle is far from won.

The IOC has been able to withstand boycotts because it selects its own members, a grossly undemocratic process that ironically has enabled it to stand up to the strongest governments. In 1980, in the face of intense pressure from U.S. President Jimmy Carter to cancel or move the Moscow Olympics, the IOC voted unanimously to go ahead. 

While most athletes are concerned with human rights, an earlier generation learned in 1980 that governments, corporations and human rights activists are quick to volunteer them for symbolic actions, only to find that they’re the only ones who actually sacrificed something important.

In 1980, the government of Pierre Trudeau forced Canadian athletes to stay home, despite their strong objection, and then cut their funds afterwards. The oral history of that bitter experience looms large in the informal discussions about the proposed Beijing boycott currently taking place among Canadian athletes.

A way forward without boycotting

Is there a way for the Olympic community to attend the Games without legitimizing atrocities in China? As an Olympian and an academic who has studied the Olympic movement for decades, I believe there is.

Instead of the IOC knuckling under host country repression, as it did in Beijing in 2008 and Sochi in 2014, it should ensure that the freedom of expression now guaranteed in the revised Rule 50 should be respected during the 2022 Winter Olympics. Activists should insist that no one will be penalized under the revised rule.

Secondly, the IOC should affirm the importance of human rights and full intercultural exchange in the opening ceremonies and the schedule of events and meetings in the Olympic Village, as modern Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin always intended. That would give athletes and others concerned about human rights the opportunity to express their views freely with other Olympic participants and their hosts without constraint.

There is Olympic precedent that needs to be remembered and strengthened. In 1936, when he arrived in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany for the Winter Olympics, IOC president Henri Baillet-Latour found the city plastered with anti-Semitic, Nazi propaganda. He immediately met with Adolf Hitler and demanded that the posters and flags be taken down.

Hitler is said to have replied: “When one visits a home, one doesn’t immediately ask the host to redecorate.” Baillet-Latour rejoined: “Yes, Mr. Chancellor, but when the Olympics is held, it’s not a national city but an Olympic city, and should be held according to Olympic rules. The propaganda must come down.” It did.

Baillet-Latour also established the requirement that the host country must recognize every participant duly entered by a National Olympic Committee, regardless of their background, a stipulation that ensured full participation in Berlin and during the Cold War.

In the end, the 1936 Games were a tremendous propaganda victory for Hitler, and the world lost sight of the safeguards won by the IOC. But an updated version of that strategy would be useful today.

The IOC should make it clear that while it’s grateful to China for hosting the Winter Olympics, the Olympic movement guarantees the right to free speech — including the condemnation of genocide and other abuses — within the Olympic precincts. Activists should support it.

It would be an important step on the long road to human rights.

Source: https://theconversation.com/boycotting-the-next-olympics-in-beijing-will-hurt-athletes-heres-a-better-idea-165451?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%206%202021&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%206%202021+CID_b089ff2d388c9f689af612f284dd2d52&utm_source=campaign_monitor_ca&utm_term=Boycotting%20the%20next%20Olympics%20in%20Beijing%20will%20hurt%20athletes%20Heres%20a%20better%20idea

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Ottawa declines overhaul of hate crime offences

2021/08/07 Leave a comment

Agree with B’nai Brith that enforcement is the bigger issue, along with the discomfort or reluctance of some to report incidents to the police:

Ottawa says existing Criminal Code offences are adequate to confront a recent surge in hate-fuelled incidents, but the federal government has recommitted to passing a law aimed at improving hate crime prosecutions.

After recent online summits on antisemitism and Islamophobia, the Department of Justice said this week that it wants to ensure hatred is better defined but otherwise has no plans to overhaul the way hate crimes are dealt with in the courts. Suspects are most often charged for a core crime and then prosecutors may argue hate motivation at the end of a trial to secure a heavier sentence.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) released a list of 35 federal recommendations including a call for Ottawa to introduce new provisions in the code to single out hate-motivated assault, murder, threats, and mischief that would include specific new penalties for each infraction. The existing code only singles out three hate propaganda offences and mischief relating to religious or cultural sites.

Nadia Hasan, chief operating officer of the NCCM, said doing this would create a much stronger deterrent for potential criminals as hate crimes have risen in recent years.

“I’m not saying by any means that this alone would eradicate hate crimes for Canada, but it would send a strong message” that hate crimes deserve their own penalties, said Dr. Hasan. Her group also wants the code changed to offer restorative justice measures.

Dr. Hassan said creating a new class of hate crimes would also help victims get better service from front line investigators, some of whom are unfamiliar with Canada’s laws around hate-motivated attacks. The NCCM helped more than 70 hate crimes victims across the country seek justice last year and some of those victims have told her group that police in some jurisdictions routinely discouraged them from filing a hate-related complaint by telling them “it’s not worth it.”

“It happens often enough where we have to fight back and make sure the police are listening and really advocate for the victim,” said Dr. Hasan.

But Ian McLeod, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said in an e-mailed statement that Canadians are well served by a justice system that prosecutes the existing hate crime offences and then, with other hate-related crimes, has penalties amplified when motivation is factored in at sentencing. However, he said Ottawa is committed to updating the Criminal Code throughBill C-36 to define hate speech as “content that expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group,” including over the Internet, where these comments are common.

Bill C-36, which targeted public hate speech by individuals, did not pass into law after being introduced by the Liberal government at the end of the parliamentary session. If an election is called this summer, as is widely expected, the legislation will no longer move forward.

Mr. McLeod’s statement said Ottawa is also tackling online hate through a proposal to create a new regime to police hateful content on social media sites.

In June, MPs unanimously voted to call the emergency Islamophobia conference following the murder of three generations of a London, Ont., Muslim family by a driver now facing terrorism charges, with the government also announcing the summit on antisemitism.

Statistics Canada also recently released its annual report on crime data showing 2020 brought a 10 per cent overall decrease in cases reported by police across the country, but departments reported a record 2,669 hate crimes cases – a 37 per cent spike from the year prior. Police and criminologists acknowledge hate crimes in general go vastly unreported.

Michael Mostyn, chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada, said his organization would rather see the current laws enforced “more diligently” before any new amendments are legislated.

“One of the serious frustrations from a group like B’nai Brith, which is dealing with the victims of hate crimes on a daily basis, is that we don’t see so many of these prosecutions across the country,” he said.

Mohammed Hashim, executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, a Crown corporation, said many different solutions are needed as Canada’s entire criminal justice system is ill-suited to address the scourge of hate crimes.

“It starts from underreporting; to not having confidence in the police dealing with hate crimes adequately; to the number of charges that are laid, or the lack thereof; and the level of seriousness that both attorney generals and prosecutors treat hate-motivated crimes,” he said.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-declines-overhaul-of-hate-crime-offences/

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Government multiculturalism-related definitions

2021/08/07 Leave a comment

As part of its instructions to departments in providing their input to the annual multiculturalism report, Canadian Heritage provided the following instructions to departments, with pages 6-10 providing relevant definitions to assist them.

Not a bad list but interesting that reasonable accommodation is not one of the terms highlighted:

multiculturalism-annual-report-definitions-a-2021-00117-ibDownload

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Harvard Research: Why Immigrants Are More Likely to Become Entrepreneurs

2021/08/06 Leave a comment

Of interest:

If you’re lucky enough to have received a Covid-19 vaccination, you probably have an immigrant entrepreneur to thank. Not only are Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna pioneers in the field of mRNA-based vaccine research; they were all founded or cofounded by immigrants.*

The entrepreneurs who started those companies are prominent examples of a larger trend. A 2012 study found that immigrants were more likely to start businesses than members of the native population in most of the 69 countries surveyed. In the United States, where 13.7% of the population is foreign-born, immigrants represent 20.2% of the self-employed workforce and 25% of startup founders. And according to a 2018 study by the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants founded or cofounded 55% of the United States’ billion-dollar companies — so-called unicorns.

Yet we have a limited understanding of why so many immigrants take the risk of starting a company. Previous research has attributed the phenomenon to host-country effects, such as labor market discrimination, selective immigration policies, and the availability of specific opportunities within ethnic groups in areas with high overall immigration.

In my recent research, I explored a more hidden driver of immigrant entrepreneurship: personality-based self-selection. The decisions to emigrate voluntarily and to start a company are both associated with high levels of risk. Entrepreneurs of all types face the threat of business failure. As a study of startups in several OECD countries showed, just above 60% survive past their third birthday, and only 40% make it past their seventh one. Immigrants, too encounter significant additional risks, from unemployment or underemployment to xenophobia and psychological trauma.

My hypothesis was that people with a high tolerance for risk would be more likely than others to perceive both voluntary emigration and entrepreneurship as viable paths. So I expected that immigrants would be more likely than others to start businesses precisely because of their appetite for risk, which helped them go abroad in the first place. I tested the hypothesis through a longitudinal study of engineering and business students at two Austrian universities. In 2007 I surveyed 1,300 students about their risk-taking preferences and their intentions and concrete plans to start a business and move abroad for work. Twelve years later I collected a second wave of data from 360 of them, via two professional social media platforms, to learn about their careers since the first survey was conducted.

The results confirmed my hypothesis: Students with a high willingness to take risks were significantly more likely than others to plan to emigrate and start a business, and by 2019 those plans had become reality. More than a quarter of the former students had moved abroad, and many had become entrepreneurs. While 19% of the non-emigrants in the sample had started one or more companies, 29% of those who had emigrated and still lived abroad had done so. Among those who had emigrated but subsequently returned to Austria, the figure was even higher: 43% had started a business in the 12 years covered by the study.

Statistical analyses confirmed that a high willingness to take risks contributed greatly to the results, even after controlling for age, gender, entrepreneurship experience, and other variables. Additional findings suggested that self-selection effects might extend to other personality traits that have been associated with success as entrepreneurs and in the labor market. The data showed that individuals with a high achievement motivation (a tendency to set and accomplish challenging goals) were significantly more likely than others to emigrate and to plan on becoming entrepreneurs at some point in the course of their lives.

These findings have direct implications for investors and policymakers. In recent years some venture capitalists, such as Unshackled Venturesand OneWay Ventures, have set up funds that work exclusively with ventures founded or cofounded by immigrant entrepreneurs. Along with startup support, they provide services tailored to the needs of foreign-born founders, including visa and legal advice. Their investment rationale is simple, and it’s very much supported by my study’s results. As OneWay Ventures argues, owing to self-selection, “immigrant founders have a competitive advantage when it comes to building impactful, global reaching ventures.”

From a policy perspective, the findings suggest that the entrepreneurial potential of immigrants extends beyond the small group of late-stage international entrepreneurs who are usually the target of entrepreneurship visa programs and investment promotion agencies. Public policy should also support nascent entrepreneurs among immigrants by providing funding, training, access to work spaces, and help navigating the administrative processes associated with starting a business as an immigrant.

In countries with net emigration, self-selection can pose challenges; entrepreneurial talent can become part of the overall “brain drain.” Although countries of origin benefit from emigrants’ entrepreneurial activities through trade and remittances, they experience fewer job-creation and economic-spillover effects than host countries do. Still, there’s a silver lining to my findings: As noted, emigrants who returned to their countries of origin were the most entrepreneurial group in the study’s sample, most likely because of the experience and opportunity-recognition capabilities they gained abroad and the advantage of operating in a familiar environment upon their return. Successful public programs in China, Senegal, Mexico, and the Philippines show that countries of origin can make use of the high potential of this group through targeted entrepreneurship support.

The social impacts of such policies can be significant. Entrepreneurship can provide immigrants and return immigrants with opportunities for upward mobility and integration. What’s more, it contributes to job creation and innovation in the society at large. It might even lead to the development of a new type of vaccine against a global pandemic.

Source: Research: Why Immigrants Are More Likely to Become Entrepreneurs

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USA: Public Opinion Shifts in a Pro-Immigration Direction

2021/08/06 Leave a comment

Of note. Dysfunctional US political system does not translate shift into political action:

Since 1965, Gallup has been polling Americans about whether they want immigration levels to decrease, increase, or remain the same. Last year, the percentage of Americans who want to increase immigration rose above the percentage who want to decrease it for the first time. In 2021, that shift held with more respondents again supporting increasing immigration than decreasing it (Figure 1). The support for increasing legal immigration may have narrowed in 2021 to 33 percent from 35 percent in 2020, but the changes are so small that they are likely statistically insignificant.

Consistent with the general rise in support for increasing immigration, a large majority of Americans still believe that immigration is a good thing for the United States (Figure 2). Just like in Figure 1, the percentage saying it’s a good thing has declined by 2 percentage points but that is a small shift a statistically insignificant shift. Although this is consistent with pro‐​immigration policy views, it also includes those who like the current level of immigration.

However, an even more important shift has continued in U.S. opinion about immigration. Since 2001, Gallup has asked this question: “(Asked of those dissatisfied with level of immigration into U.S.) Would you like to see the level of immigration in this country increased, decreased or remain about the same?” Respondents who are dissatisfied with the level of immigration are increasingly likely to be dissatisfied because they think that there is too little immigration. I wrote about this last year but the trend has grown in 2021 (Figure 3). In 2020, 26 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the level of immigration and they wanted to decrease immigration. By 2021, that percentage had fallen to 19 percent. The percent of those who were dissatisfied and wanted an increase stayed about the same and the percent of those satisfied climbed slightly.

That’s a tectonic shift. From 2001–2016, an average of 63 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the level of immigration. Only about 5 percent of respondents were dissatisfied and wanted to increase immigration levels and a whopping 44 percent of the dissatisfied wanted to decrease them (Figure 3). This began to change shortly after President Trump took office. From 2017–2020, an average of about 11 percent of respondents wanted to increase immigration levels while 28 percent were dissatisfied and wanted to decrease them. By the end of the Trump administration, there was still quite a gap among those dissatisfied with immigration, but it had narrowed.

We’re clearly seeing a shift in public opinion where those who dislike the current system are beginning to dislike it because it’s too restrictive. To the extent that we can believe surveys that measure opinions unexpressed through concrete actions like voting, this is a big shift. So far, virtually all of the political energy and enthusiasm has been for immigration restriction. Anti‐​immigration voters cared a lot more about this issue than pro‐​immigration voters. Now, the decline in the percent of respondents who are dissatisfied and who want less immigration is beginning to look like the collapse in anti‐​immigration sentiment that began in the mid‐​1990s (Figure 1).

One doubt I had about this change in behavior last year was that this increased pro‐​immigration opinion was just a reaction to President Trump and that it would fade out after he left office. In other words, I was worried that this was just an ephemeral liberal reaction of President Trump rather than a real and sustained change in opinion. But since the 2021 survey results show that only 19 percent of respondents are dissatisfied and want less immigration, a number 7 percentage points below the previous response in 2020, that is an indication that the pro‐​immigration sentiment of the American public is continuing to increase in the Biden administration. That improvement is especially surprising considering the rise in apprehensions along the border.

This appears to be a positive and sustainable change in American public opinion.

Source: Public Opinion Shifts in a Pro-Immigration Direction | Cato at …https://www.cato.org › blog › public-opinion-shifts-pro…

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