Don’t believe we have national stats in Canada but reader feedback welcome:
The Justice Department declined to prosecute 82% of hate crime suspects between 2005 and 2019, according to a department reportreleased this week.
State of play: Prosecutors declined to prosecute the 1,548 cases for different reasons, but more than 55% of the decisions came down to insufficient evidence, which means that a case could not be proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt.
The second most cited reason to decline cases was for the prioritization of federal resources.
Prosecutors conducted investigations into 1,878 suspects in potential hate crime cases, but only 17% were prosecuted. Another 1% of cases were dismissed by U.S. magistrates.
Yes, but: The report also said that of those crimes that were reported, the conviction rate increased from 83% between 2005 and 2009 to 94% between 2015 and 2019. About 85% of defendants convicted were sent to prison for an average term of 7.5 years.
The big picture: The report comes weeks after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a six-step plan to combat hate crimes in the country. He said he would direct the Justice Department to increase resources and coordination to state, local and tribal partners.
The plan would also designate an officer to facilitate the expedited review of hate crimes, as well as increase the department’s language access capabilities to make it easier to report these types of crimes.
Worth noting: Reports of hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community have increased during the pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate received more than 6,600 self-reported incidents from the beginning of the pandemic until March this year.
President Biden in May signed into law the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would direct the Justice Department to expedite the review of coronavirus-related hate crimes.
Not convinced that not providing training for truck drivers is at the same level as the other examples. And interviewing only 3 employees is hardly a representative sample:
Blue-collar workers employed by a Montreal borough say they’re seeking compensation from the city after a pair of reports earlier this spring revealed allegations of widespread discrimination against Black and other racialized employees.
Celeste, a longtime worker in the Montreal North borough who did not want to give his last name for fear of reprisals, says Black and other racialized employees of the district are passed over for opportunities because managers prefer hiring white people. He says he’s been left out of training sessions, asked to do menial work below his seniority level and subjected to racist comments on the job.
The constant rejection and humiliation over the years have affected his sleep, his marriage and especially his morale. “It was like something has been taken away from me that I had in me,” Celeste said in a recent interview. “This spirit I had to succeed, to go further.”
About 40 of Montreal North’s racialized employees have asked their union to file grievances for moral and other damages in connection with lost wages and benefits and for the attacks on their dignity, Fo Niemi of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations said in a recent interview. Niemi’s group is supporting the workers in their quest for compensation from the city.
The union grievances follow the release of two reports commissioned earlier this year revealing Black and other racialized employees of the Montreal North borough said they faced unfair and discriminatory hiring practices that prevented them from accessing better jobs and pay.
Celeste and another longtime Montreal North borough employee told The Canadian Press they and their Black colleagues have been subjected to racist comments at work and denied the same opportunities that white colleagues are given.
The City of Montreal has acknowledged the existence of systemic racismwithin its civil service and says it’s working with the borough to improve diversity and inclusion. In a recent statement, the city said it would support the borough in implementing all the recommendations of the two reports, adding that a diversity and inclusion advisor had been hired to oversee the process.
But Niemi and the workers say Montreal needs to do more than change its culture: it needs to compensate the workers who suffered discrimination. “If you really are committed to systemic racism, it’s not about changing systems and policies but also supporting victims,” Niemi said.
Luc Bisson, president of the Montreal blue-collar workers’ union, confirmed there have been grievances filed as a result of the reports, but he could not confirm their nature.
Celeste said that on two occasions, he was discriminated against when applying for permanent jobs for which he was qualified at the Montreal North borough. The first time, he said, the posting was taken down and later reposted. In the second instance, the job was reposted to include qualifications he didn’t have. It went to a white employee who was less senior, he said.
The first report, commissioned by the city’s comptroller general and published in April, described a long-running climate of tension among blue-collar workers. Workers “almost unanimously report inequitable or discriminatory treatment,” read the report authored by Tania Sabia, an industrial relations expert with Université de Montréal.
The second report, produced by an expert hired by the union, documented the same problems as the first. Written by Université du Québec à Montréal professor Angelo Soares, the report concluded the workers’ allegations of discrimination were “founded” and urged the City of Montreal, the borough and the union to take “urgent” action to correct them.
Sabia’s report delved into the process of driving a heavy truck for the city — which is seen among workers as one of the better jobs at the borough and key to advancing within the administration. The borough, Sabia said, required employees who want to drive trucks to pass a test involving backing up a truck with a trailer — even if that skill is not part of the job description — a requirement that is seen by racialized employees as a barrier.
A Haitian employee of the Montreal North borough told The Canadian Press that many immigrants failed the course because they weren’t from a cultural background where driving a trailer is common. “We had to tell the trainer that immigrants don’t fish, don’t hunt,” the employee, who didn’t want to be identified because they feared reprisals, said in a recent interview. “When we have time off we do other things. It’s like expecting everyone to like hockey.”
The employee said the borough doesn’t offer to train employees how to drive a trailer. As a result, the employee said, some Haitian workers have had to scramble to find someone outside work to teach them or suffer the humiliation of failing the course and being permanently relegated to menial or physical jobs such as emptying trash cans.
A third borough employee, who is white, told The Canadian Press he was suspended by his employer after speaking out about the unequal treatment his colleagues experienced. He confirmed a group of employees are hoping for financial compensation.
Sabia issued a number of recommendations, including that the city conduct a wide examination of the internal relations in the borough. He also recommended the city clarify the hiring process and ensure all employees have equal chances to succeed at the courses offered to attain certain positions.
While Sabia’s report noted that the city had made improvements to its processes, none of the three Montreal North blue-collar workers interviewed by The Canadian Press said they had noticed any positive changes.
Celeste said that if he is successful in receiving compensation, he will consider quitting his job and leaving Montreal to find better working conditions.
Of interest. Some similar policy fallacies such as favouring GDP growth over per capita GDP growth as in Canada:
Nades and Priya Murugappan made a fundamental mistake when they separately fled to Australia from Sri Lanka almost a decade ago.
The pair, who met at the meatworks in Biloela on Queensland’s Capricorn Coast and now have two children, lived in the town for four years.
They were on temporary protection visas before they were detained and sent to Christmas Island awaiting deportation.
Since 2019, they’ve existed in a guarded compound under 24-hour surveillance with daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa in an operation that has cost taxpayers more than $6 million.
Rather than flee their home country by boat, they instead should have applied for a skilled worker or student visa. It’s a pretty certain bet they would have received one.
A quick flick through the Skilled Occupation List for workers from abroad shows everything from carpenters to chief executives, chefs and composers, clothing trade workers. And that’s just the Cs.
And even if your chosen occupation is removed, never fear.
“Pending nomination and/or visa applications will not be adversely impacted by the subsequent removal of any occupation from the skilled occupation list,” the Home Affairs department website says.
For decades, our politicians have batted up their tough border control credentials with threats to turn back boats and a promise of imprisonment.
In reality, the tough measures have been meted out to those with the least ability to defend themselves: a handful of the poorest and weakest, who now have become pawns in a macabre game of political brinkmanship.
At the same time as we’ve been tough on refugees, Australia has thrown open the doors, with one of the largest per capita immigration programs in the developed world.
It has enticed around 4,000 new arrivals a week, mostly into the two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.
But even now, after decades of mass immigration, it appears we still are suffering critical “skills shortages”.
Fruit pickers, waiters and baristas are in short supply. Almost daily, there are calls to throw caution to the wind when it comes to COVID-19 and start importing workers again.
Low wages growth is hurting our economy
It has taken quite a while. But Reserve Bank governor Phil Lowe set himself on a collision course last week with big business and sections of the federal government by stating the bleeding obvious.
And that is, Australia has used immigration as a means for keeping the cost of labour subdued. Not that Dr Lowe put it so bluntly. But he made the point repeatedly that adding to the supply of workers keeps wages low.
It’s pretty basic economics, really.
For years now, one of the key factors undermining our economic performance has been low wages growth.
Economists love to call it anything but what it is. They’ll talk about underutilisation or excess capacity. But the graph below says it all.
In the past 12 months, there’s been almost universal agreement that stagnating wages pose one of the greatest dangers to derailing our recovery, particularly given our eye-watering levels of household debt.
But whenever wages start to rise, the calls to bring in more workers start immediately.
Interestingly, those making the most noise now are the ones who have benefitted the most from a constant influx of tourists, students and temporary workers.
The flood of overseas workers, particularly in hospitality, has left many with barely enough work upon which to survive. And it has opened the door to exploitation and wages theft on a grand scale.
Here is another graph, presented by Dr Lowe last week, showing data from the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
GDP growth doesn’t mean our lives are better
Australia has prospered greatly from immigration, particularly in the post-war period. It has enriched the nation in ways far more than can be measured by money.
Somewhere along the way, however, canny politicians figured out the great immigration con job: that by adding ever greater numbers of people, you automatically get GDP growth.
That’s because GDP is a crude yardstick. It simply measures the amount of stuff you produce. The more people you’ve got, the more you consume, and the more you produce.
Big business loves it too.
Not only does the influx of workers keep wages low, but all those extra people also end up consumers of your products. You sell more, your profits rise and so do your bonuses.
What GDP doesn’t measure is whether or not we all are better off as individuals.
As it turns out, we haven’t performed anywhere near as well as we’ve been told. Once you divide GDP by the number of people — to get a like for like comparison — the picture looks very different.
Remember how we were the “miracle economy” with 30 years or so without a recession?
The green bars below point out at least three recessions and quite a number of near misses.
You’ve no doubt heard the grand visions: “This government will create a million new jobs over the next five years.”
And, bingo, just like that, it happens.
The thing is, when you are adding a million people over five years, you need to have a million extra jobs just to keep your head above water.
And the problem is that many of the new arrivals end up working part-time, in lower-paid jobs and in occupations that require far fewer skills than they possess. Doctors and engineers end up as Uber drivers.
Foreign workers are greatest victims of wage theft
The list is too long to compile. For years, revelations of wage theft within major Australian corporations became a blight on the nation.
But big, public organisations that are open to scrutiny are only a small part of the problem.
With such a huge influx, foreign workers, many of them desperate for employment and unaware of their rights, have been routinely exploited.
Students and temporary visa holders are the most vulnerable. But permanent arrivals share similar experiences.
Story after story of exploitation and sexual assault have littered newspapers, websites and current affairs programs.
Among other things, it concluded that temporary visa holders comprised around 10 per cent of the workforce and that the 457 visa program was impacting university graduates and depressing wages. But it was the title that said it all.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has conducted raids, issued fines and published reports on deliberate underpayment and exploitation, particularly within the hospitality industry.
But for months now, almost every day brings forth a new claim of “skills shortages” and the need to start importing workers because firms have to pay more.
Valid concerns regarding making reality reflect the aspirational values in the Charter:
I still see people quoting that line from Justin Trudeau’s interview with The New York Times in 2015 – the one about there being “no core identity, no mainstream” in Canada – as if it were some sort of darkly revealing gaffe, in which he incautiously lets slip his globalist agenda, or his woke radicalism, or his hatred of Canada.
In fact, as the next line in the interview makes clear, he was merely repeating a commonplace, almost a truism. What ties Canada together, he said, are “shared values,” among which he listed “openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice.”
This does not make Canada, as the Prime Minister claimed, “the first post-national state.” It is simply a different kind of national state. As it is defined in the literature, ours is a civic, rather than ethnocultural, nation: one rooted not in blood or language, but in common beliefs and aspirations.
Contrary to what both Mr. Trudeau and his critics seem to believe, this is neither a new nor a radical idea. It has been the basis of American nationhood, for example, for more than two centuries. And it was very much the idea of our own founding fathers, who spoke often and movingly of the “political nation” they hoped to create.
But what if there are no common values or ideals that tie us together? What if we cannot agree on what we stand for – or even that we should exist? What if, in short, we are neither an ethnocultural nor a civic nation? What then?
What distinguishes civic nationhood is the element of choice, or at least the consciousness of it. (The ethnic or cultural idea of nation is just as much a choice, even if it seems more “natural” to its proponents.) In Ernest Renan’s celebrated definition, a nation is a permanent daily referendum of its citizens.
For Canadians, that choice is particularly acute: the pull of the American nation to our south, or the smaller, ethnocultural nations within, is ever-present. If the Canadian national idea is to succeed, then it must make an especially compelling appeal to those shared values, common beliefs and collective ambitions (Renan, again: “having done great things together” in the past, a nation is defined by the wish “to do them again” in future). And yet that is not what we have done.
Far from soaring ideals or rousing ambitions, postwar Canadian nationalists obsessed over the rather more mundane project of cultivating a distinctive Canadian cultural identity – an identity that, so far as it was not wholly ersatz, looked remarkably like their own: white, English-speaking, southern Ontarian, social democratic.
Hence the stereotype of the polite, diffident Canadian, so naturally inclined to statism, and (above all) so different from the Americans. And hence the reflexive recourse to the state, as both the emblem of our national difference and the vehicle for its preservation.
For a time they were able to ignore or shout down those who dissented from nationalist orthodoxy – who preferred, say, free trade to protectionism, or markets to public enterprise. But having invested so heavily in the idea of difference as the fount of nationhood, they found they had nothing to say when their compatriots – Indigenous people, Quebeckers, Western Canadians – replied, in effect: hang on, we’re different from you.
And the more that our political leaders have tried to paper over those differences, essentially by denying that Canada means anything or has any foundational principles – or none that it would insist on in the face of sectional opposition – the less argument they can offer for its continuing existence as a nation-state.
The Charter of Rights was an attempt to put this right: to define the nation in terms of its commitment to a short list of universal ideals, rights to which every Canadian citizen was equally entitled. But the proposal was doomed from the start. Rights are an American idea, said some. For others the problem was not rights, as such, but the idea that they should be guaranteed equally.
At any rate, the critics have won the day: With the notwithstanding clause now almost routinely invoked, the Charter is fast becoming a dead letter. It joins a long list of other national institutions and symbols – Parliament, the Crown, the flag, the anthem – that, by a combination of disuse and abuse, have been rendered more or less inert. Or maybe it is simply that there is no longer any nation left to symbolize.
The consequence is not disintegration, but paralysis. The moral basis of nationalism – the vindication of it, in spite of its manifest failings – lies in its capacity to expand the bounds of empathy beyond the merely familiar. It is what makes us willing to make sacrifices for one another in a way we would not do for those not of the same nation. It is what makes democratic government possible, beyond the local level – for without it, we will never accept to be on the losing side of any vote.
Which brings us to our present condition, in which the discovery that Canada has, like other nations, its own list of past crimes and present failures, has led to a kind of collective emotional breakdown, wherein the very existence of the country or the idea that it is, on balance, a good thing, is called into the question: as if the world would be a better place had Canada never been born.
If this means an end to our peculiarly Canadian sense of superior virtue – the Canadian identity, again – all well and good. But to say that we have fallen short of certain ideals does not mean it is hypocritical even to aspire to them. We should understand “Canadian values” for what they are – not as qualities of character with which we are exceptionally endowed, but as moral duties to which we we are called.
The Americans, for all their faults, get this. The nation has never lived up to the ringing phrases of its Declaration of Independence; it falls far short of them even today. Yet it remains a defining statement of Americanism – like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, a beacon to which it is perpetually drawn. That way is still open to us, if we choose to follow it.
More on capturing the “the good, the bad and the ugly” and finding a balance, along with age appropriateness for the negative parts:
I have my doubts about America. As a Catholic, my first loyalty is to a faith that predates and promises to outlast our Republic, that was disfavored for much of our history and may be headed into disfavor once again. American anti-Catholicism is far from the worst evil in this nation’s history, but it still instills a special obligation to take critiques of our Anglo-liberal-Protestant inheritance seriously, whether they come from radicals or traditionalists or both.
But when it comes to introducing American history to my own American children, none yet older than 10, I’ve realized that we’re giving them a pretty patriotic education: trips to the battlefield at Concord; books like “Johnny Tremain” and the d’Aulaires’ biographies of Lincoln and Franklin and Pocahontas; incantatory readings of “Paul Revere’s Ride.”
One of my son’s favorite books is an account of Lewis and Clark’s mission that pairs extracts from diaries with vivid illustrations. Laura Ingalls Wilder may have been canceled a few years ago, but she’s a dominant literary figure for our daughters. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” plays in our minivan, and when my eldest daughter tries to win arguments by declaring “I’m a free American!” I let the claim stand, rather than answering her with Catholic critiques of liberal individualism.
I should say that we also deliver doses of realism about slavery and segregation and the importance of seeing history from the perspective of the defeated, from the Tories to the Sioux. (Though many older texts contain those perspectives, however un-P.C. their form; tragic realism is not the exclusive province of the early 21st century.) And we are not home-schoolers; our patriotic education interacts with what our kids learn in school and pick up through osmosis in our progressive state and city.
But having written recently about the race-and-history wars, I think it’s worth talking about what makes patriotic education valuable, even if you ultimately want kids to have critical distance from the nation’s sins.
Here I want to disagree mildly with David French, the famous conservative critic of conservatism, who wrote for Time magazine recently chiding parents who are “afraid children will not love their country unless they are taught that their country is good.” The love for country we instill, he argued, shouldn’t rest on American innocence or greatness; rather we should love our country the way we love our family, which means “telling our full story, the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
To which I would say, yes, but … you probably want to feel a certain security in your children’s family bonds before you start telling them about every sin and scandal.
Admittedly there are families where that isn’t possible, as there are political contexts where young kids need to know dark truths upfront. But we aren’t living in Nazi-occupied France, and there is easily enough good in America, past and present, to lay a patriotic foundation, so that more adult forms of knowledge are shaped by a primary sense of loyalty and love.
Moreover, with families the people you’re supposed to love are usually there with you, and to some extent you can’t help loving them even in their sins. Whereas the nation’s past is more distant, words and names and complicated legacies, not flesh and blood. So if historical education doesn’t begin with what’s inspiring, a sense of real affection may never take root — risking not just patriotism but a basic interest in the past.
I encounter the latter problem a lot, talking to progressive-minded young people — a sense that history isn’t just unlovable but actually pretty boring, a grim slog through imperialism and cisheteropatriarchy.
Whereas if you teach kids first that the past is filled with people who did remarkable, admirable, courageous things — acts of endurance and creation that seem beyond our own capacity — then you can build the awareness of French’s bad-and-ugly organically, filling out the picture through middle and high school, leaving both a love of country and a fascination with the past intact.
And starting with heroism doesn’t just mean starting with white people: From Harriet Tubman to Martin Luther King Jr., the story of the African-American experience is the most straightforwardly heroic American narrative, the natural core of liberal patriotism — something liberalism understood at the time of Barack Obama’s election, but in its revolutionary and pessimistic mood seems in danger of forgetting.
This idea of a patriotic foundation hardly eliminates controversy. You still have to figure out at what age and in what way you introduce more detail and more darkness. This is as true for Catholic doubts as for radical critiques: I’m not sure exactly how to frame Roe v. Wade and abortion for my older kids.
In this sense French and others to his left are correct — there is no escape from hard historical truths, no simple way to raise educated Americans.
But still I feel no great difficulty letting my children begin, wherever their education takes them, with the old familiar poetry: Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.
Hundreds of people arriving in England in small boats are being immediately detained in immigration removal centres, raising fears of a new, secret Home Office policy to deport them without their asylum claims being properly considered.
Among the detainees are apparent trafficking and torture victims from countries including Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, who would normally be allowed asylum accommodation in the community while their claims are processed but instead are effectively imprisoned.
Children are also among those who have crossed the Channel and have been sent directly to immigration removal centres, with solicitors claiming the Home Office has classed minors as adults despite not age-assessing them in person.
Some small-boat asylum seekers have been denied access to a lawyer since early May after landing and being immediately detained in a removal centre.
Campaigners said the development was “not the act of a civilised and compassionate nation”.
The outcry follows the publication of home secretary Priti Patel’s nationality and borders bill on Tuesday. It claims to reform the asylum system but has been described by the UN as having an “almost neocolonial approach” in allowing the UK to shirk its international responsibilities to refugees.
Immigration lawyers say the apparent undisclosed policy change, which appears to have been introduced over the past two months, is unlawful and they are preparing to challenge it.
Toufique Hossain, director of public law and immigration at Duncan Lewis, described it as a potentially “grave abuse of power”.
Hossain added: “They have effectively started bypassing the asylum system and saying to individuals with strong claims that their claim is weak, that they may not get an appeal and that they intend to remove them quickly.
“The whole starting point is to disbelieve people arriving from places where the Home Office knows individuals have a well-founded fear of harm and persecution.”
The shift appears to have affected hundreds already, with Duncan Lewis receiving reports that the UK’s network of immigration removal centres is overwhelmed.
Harmondsworth removal centre near Heathrow airport – whose capacity is 670 – is understood to be “overwhelmed”. The Home Office is also filling Brook House at Gatwick airport and Colnbrook, near Heathrow – combined capacity 850 – with small boat arrivals.
“Detention centres are being filled with people who have just arrived but who are not being released into the community,” said Tom Nunn of Duncan Lewis.
He added they are aware of more than 50 Vietnamese nationals, a country which is one of the top sources for trafficking into the UK.
In addition, there is speculation that the Home Office has chartered a deportation flight to Vietnam at the end of July for small boat arrivals, although the government would not confirm this.
Nunn said the firm was aware of Iraqis and Afghans who had indicators of torture, but whom the Home Office had apparently detained in contravention of the established asylum process.
“There have been a few cases where medical advice from doctors in the immigration centre is that they are victims of torture,” said Nunn. “But we are seeing a lot of cases where the Home Office is pushing back on this, basically saying that: ‘You’re a victim of torture but we believe we can remove you quickly and therefore we’ll keep you in detention.”
Clare Moseley of charity Care4Calais said: “To detain and deport such vulnerable people in this way is not the act of a civilised and compassionate nation. If we fail to ensure that those who need our help are treated in a fair and decent manner we risk losing our reputation as a decent and honest society.”
Usually asylum seekers are placed in special accommodation while their claims are heard, a process that can often take longer than a year. Currently there is a record backlog of 109,000 cases in the system with over 79,000 being processed for more than a year.
This is not the first time that the Home Office appears to have quietly introduced measures that reduce the rights and protection of asylum seekers.
Last year the Home Office secretly shortened asylum screening interviews for arrivals in the UK, a move that meant torture and trafficking victims could be deported far more quickly.
Last week, however, the high court ruled that Patel should quickly bring back to the UK a small boat asylum seeker and Sudanese torture survivor who was removed to France.
The 38-year-old was tracked down by Liberty Investigates and the Observer in an investigation whose evidence paved the way for last week’s government defeat.
Called Omar in the investigation, he had nine of the 11 indicators of trafficking and torture yet was deported to France last August after just two months in the UK.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We assess the suitability of all new arrivals and only detain people when there is a realistic prospect of their removal within a reasonable timescale, and evidence of their vulnerability is outweighed by immigration considerations.
“It is inaccurate to say unaccompanied minors are being classed as adults during age assessment interviews. The Home Office makes every effort to ensure people’s age is assessed correctly, in the interests of safeguarding and to avoid abuse of the system.”
They added that the government would “crack down on illegal entry and the criminality associated with it”.
The spokesperson said: “People should claim asylum in the first safe country they arrive in and we must ensure dangerous journeys are not incentivised.”
Nearly two decades ago, when the New Zealand highway authority was planning the Waikato Expressway, people from the Māori tribe Ngāti Naho objected. The highway would encroach on an area that, in Māori tradition, was governed by a water-dwelling creature, a taniwha.
The authorities took those concerns into account and rerouted the road to circumvent the area in question. As a result, a year later, when the area was hit by a major flood, the road was unharmed.
“I’m still waiting for the headline, ‘Mythical Creature Saves the Taxpayer Millions,’” said Dan Hikuroa, a senior lecturer in Māori studies at the University of Auckland and member of the Ngāti Maniapoto tribe. He has often wondered if, once the flood hit, the technical team later said, “Why didn’t you just say it’s a flood risk area?”
Like many Indigenous peoples around the world, the Māori have developed their understanding of their environment through close observation of the landscape and its behaviors over the course of many generations. Now the New Zealand Environmental Protection Agency regularly looks for ways to integrate traditional Māori knowledge, or mātauranga, into its decision-making. Mr. Hikuroa has been appointed the culture commissioner for UNESCO New Zealand, a role he said is centered on integrating Māori knowledge into UNESCO’s work.
Western-trained researchers and governments are increasingly recognizing the wealth of knowledge that Indigenous communities have amassed to coexist with and protect their environments over hundreds or even thousands of years. Peer-reviewed scientific journals have published studies demonstrating that around the world, Indigenous-managed lands have far more biodiversity intact than other lands, even those set aside for conservation.
Embracing Indigenous knowledge, as New Zealand is trying to do, can improve how federal governments manage ecosystems and natural resources. It can also deepen Western scientists’ understanding of their own research, potentially, by providing alternative perspectives and approaches to understanding their field of work. This is ever more urgent, particularly as the climate crisis unfolds. “It is Indigenous resilience and worldview that every government, country and community can learn from, so that we manage our lands, waters and resources not just across budget years, but across generations,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and America’s first Native American cabinet secretary, said in remarks to the United Nations.
Indigenous scholars warn, though, that while traditional knowledge can be used to benefit the world, it can also be mishandled or exploited. Dominique David Chavez, a descendant of the Arawak Taíno in the Caribbean, and a research fellow at the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona and the National Science Foundation, says that, as Western scientists, “we are trained to go into communities, get that knowledge and go back to our institutions and disseminate it in academic journals.” That can be disruptive to traditional knowledge sharing, from one generation to another, she says, which should be the priority — ensuring that Indigenous knowledge systems are preserved in and supportive of the communities that developed them. In Puerto Rico, known by its Indigenous people as Borikén, Ms. Chavez is studying ways to restore the connections and traditional knowledge transmission patterns between elders and youth.
Bridging Indigenous and Western science also means respecting the ecosystem of values in which the knowledge systems are embedded. For instance, the practice of planting a diversity of crops and building healthy soil for water retention — today known as “regenerative agriculture” — has existed in Indigenous communities around the world throughout history. Yet the growing push to adopt regenerative agriculture practices elsewhere is often selective, using industrial pesticides, for example, or leaving out the well-being of people who farm the land.
“In Indigenous sciences, it’s not possible to separate the knowledge from the ethics of the responsibility for that knowledge — whereas in Western science, we do that all the time,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York in Syracuse and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The scientific method is designed to be indifferent to morals or values, she adds. “Indigenous knowledge puts them back in.”
Ideally, the shared use of Indigenous knowledge can help mend broken relationships between Indigenous and Western communities.
In upstate New York, Ms. Kimmerer points to sweetgrass, a native plant used for traditional basketry. She was approached by a tribe concerned about the decline of the plant and looking for a solution.
Government regulations had already restricted its harvest. “One thing people often think about is, is it being overharvested?” Ms. Kimmerer said. She helped to conduct studies that ultimately showed that harvesting sweetgrass, following Indigenous protocols, is the very thing that will help it to thrive. “If you just leave it alone, it starts to decline.”
For her, that speaks to a core flaw in Western approaches to land management: the belief that human interaction is necessarily harmful to ecosystems. “That’s one of the reasons Native people were systematically removed from what are today’s national parks, because of this idea that people and nature can’t coexist in a good way.” But Indigenous knowledge, Ms. Kimmerer said, is really all about, ‘Oh yes we can, and we cultivate practices for how that is possible,’” she said.
While combating wildfires last year, Australian authorities turned to Aboriginal practices. While researchers have connected the severity of the fires to climate change, Ms. Kimmerer added that how Australia’s land has been managed in the modern era may have also played a role. Aboriginal people had “been managing that land in a fire landscape for millenniums, ” she said. “The fact that Indigenous science has been ignored is a contributing factor to the fires there.”
As the world increasingly recognizes the accomplishments of many Indigenous communities that successfully coexist with ecosystems, there is much for Western society to learn.
“We have this notion that Western science is the pathway to truth. We don’t really even entertain the possibility that it could come from somewhere else,” said Ms. Kimmerer. “Resource managers, land managers need to understand that there are multiple ways of knowing.”
Of note, despite a relative lack of programs to encourage skilled immigration. Same trend in Canada but more of conscious policy and program choices:
A major immigration debate over the last several years is whether the U.S. immigration policy should be more meritocratic by attracting higher educated workers. President Trump supported such a system if it were pared with many fewer legal immigrants coming in while Democrats are mostly supportive of increasing all types of immigration. Although Congress did not pass a law to create a more meritocratic immigration system, new immigrants to the United States are increasingly skilled. In other words, the U.S. immigration system is becoming more meritocratic on its own.
The United States is an increasingly attractive place for highly educated immigrants. From all regions except for Africa, the share of immigrants arriving with a college degree has risen since 1995 while the share arriving with a high school degree or lower has dropped. Figure 1 shows the change in the proportion of recently arrived immigrants, 5 years in the United States or fewer, in different education groups between 1995 and 2020. Persons under 30 are excluded, as they are more likely to have not completed their education.
Some of these changes are striking. The proportion of recent immigrants from Central America with graduate degrees increased by more than 350 percent in 35 years, from 2 percent of recent immigrants in 1995 to 9.5 percent of recent immigrants in 2020. The share of new immigrants who are high school dropouts has declined or every region or origin from 1995 to 2020.
The same trend is true when comparing individual countries. Figure 2 shows the change in educational attainment from four of the top sending countries in 1995 and 2020. Mexican immigrants, who are often criticized as being low‐educated and low‐skilled, are now 2.4 times more likely to have received a bachelor’s degree at arrival than they were just 35 years ago.
Native‐born Americans are not the only ones who benefit from more highly educated immigrants. The children of immigrants consistently earn more education than their parents, and since 2010, more than native‐born Americans (Figure 4). Again, persons under 30 are excluded from analysis to avoid over‐counting individuals with less than a high school education.
Congress did not create a merit‐based immigration system as President Trump wanted, but we seem to be getting one nonetheless as immigrants become more skilled over time.
The Special Committee on Canada-China Relations should stop making virtue signalling calls for the Olympics to be moved (won’t happen) and join the British parliamentary committee in calling for a boycott:
China on Thursday criticized what it called the “politicization of sports” after British lawmakers urged a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics unless China allows an investigation of complaints of human rights abuses in its northwest.
A boycott “will not succeed,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.
The British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee called for the government to urge British companies to boycott the Beijing Games, scheduled for February. The appeal adds to pressure on China’s ruling Communist Party over reports of mass detentions and other abuses of mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
“China firmly opposes the politicization of sports and the interference in other countries’ internal affairs by using human rights issues as a pretext,” Wang said. “Attempts to disrupt, obstruct and sabotage the preparation and convening of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games out of political motivation have been met with strong opposition from all sectors of the international community.”
China, which rejects the accusations of abuses in Xinjiang, has denied the United Nations unfettered access to the region to investigate the claims.
Of note but probably the least of their worries right now:
A confidential report prepared for the federal Greens details the party’s shortcomings in recruiting and supporting diverse candidates in the last general election, the Star has learned.
It’s the same problem beleaguered leader Annamie Paul has said the party officials trying to depose her don’t want her to address.
Sean Yo, a top member of Paul’s political circle who ran her byelection campaign in Toronto Centre last year, said Paul’s push to increase diversity is “central” to the challenges she is facing within the party.
“I think that others who have obstructed and frustrated her leadership see this as a distraction, and that everything is just fine, and interpret her strength and determination as something that’s unwelcome,” Yo told the Star on Thursday.
The report, which was obtained by the Star, was drafted last year by a Toronto-based firm called DiversiPro, with input from the party’s diversity co-ordinator who was laid off this week.
The authors surveyed representatives of riding associations across the country. Of the minority that responded — representing 63 Green electoral district associations (EDAs) — 29 per cent said they had no strategy to recruit equity-seeking candidates for the 2019 election, while 35 per cent said they did not understand what that means.
“What are equity-seeking groups? We don’t sell shares in our EDA,” said one unnamed respondent quoted in the report.
The report said this is a “glaring indicator of a lack of information about diversity issues in the party,” and concluded “it is clear that the party has a lot of work to do before it truly embodies its core values of respect for diversity and social justice.”
Paul declined to comment about the report through her spokesperson on Thursday.
The internal party report was made as part of a push to address a lack of diversity after the 2019 election, when the party ran fewer visible minority candidates than the far-right People’s Party, according to a report by The Canadian Press.
That push also included hiring a diversity co-ordinator, Zahra Mitra, who helped create the confidential report before she was laid off this week along with two staffers in Paul’s office. This spring, Mitra penned an email to dozens of party staffers that decried the Greens’ “very real problem with racism” and accused unnamed officials of hampering efforts to make the organization more inclusive.
Now Paul is facing a direct threat to her leadership as the party’s top governing body — the federal council — prepares to hold a vote on July 20 that could lead to her removal. The vote was called over Paul’s handling of a controversy involving a top aide who denounced Green MPs’ comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Last month, Paul accused unnamed officials of making “racist” and “sexist” allegations against her, and tied their resistance to her efforts to make the Greens “the most diverse party in federal politics” through an open recruitment drive called the “Time to Run” campaign. She told reporters that “this kind of change… is often perceived as a threat to the existing institutional gatekeepers,” and said members on the party’s top governance body who are seeking to oust her oppose her diversity efforts.
Judy Green, who ran against Paul in the leadership race last year and recently resigned from her local riding association in Nova Scotia, said she was told she would not be allowed to run for the party in the next election. In an interview with the Star, she said she supports Paul’s push for diversity but that her efforts to recruit fresh candidates are pushing out more experienced Greens.
“People who’ve been working very hard, who were building teams, who were prepared to represent the Greens in the next election, have been cast aside,” Green said.
But the party’s decision to address diversity predates Paul’s leadership, which began in October 2020.
Prateek Awasthi was the Green party’s executive director until he resigned last fall amid controversy over his handling of harassment complaints at a previous job. He said his top task when he was hired after the 2019 election was to increase diversity in the party, and he implemented changes like mandatory training for leadership candidates and federal council members, as well as a process to deal with complaints about discrimination.
Based on interviews with 36 equity-seeking candidates from the 2019 election, the diversity report found that several of them experienced racism and sexism from Green members during the campaign, including comments about their appearance and “jokes” about their gender or race.
“A lot of those painful experiences were shared and the party decided that it would take this seriously,” Awasthi said, referring to the origins of the diversity report.
However, despite what he perceived as good intentions, Awasthi said he confronted skepticism from top officials who felt the diversity push was unnecessary.
“They were sort of shocked at the implication that they might have any unconscious bias because of how they loved the planet,” Awasthi said.
And that might be part of the problem Paul is having in the party as she pushes to bring in diverse candidates, he said.
“You can’t Kumbaya your way out of systemic racism, right? It’s tough work. And that was sort of the source of the resistance.”
Multicultural Meanderings 