Douthat: The Excesses of Antiracist Education

2021/07/05 Leave a comment

On trying to find a balance and the risk of simplistic dichotomies, in contrast the the more varied realities and situations:

In my last column I tried to describe part of the current controversy over race and K-12 education — the part that turns on whether it’s possible to tell a fuller historical story about slavery and segregation while also retaining a broadly patriotic understanding of America’s founding and development.

In this column I will try to describe the part of the controversy that concerns how we teach about racism today. It’s probably the more intense debate, driving both progressive zeal and conservative backlash.

Again, I want to start with what the new progressivism is interested in changing. One change involves increasingly familiar terms like “structural” and “systemic” racism, and the attempt to teach about race in a way that emphasizes not just explicitly racist laws and attitudes, but also how America’s racist past still influences inequalities today.

In theory, this shift is supposed to enable debates that avoid using “racist” as a personal accusation — since the point is that a culture can sustain persistent racial inequalities even if most white people aren’t bigoted or biased.

Still, this kind of vision would, on its own, face inevitable conservative resistance on several grounds: that it overstates the challenges facing minorities in America today; that it seems to de-emphasize personal responsibility; that it implies policy responses (racial quotas, reparations) that are racially discriminatory, arguably unconstitutional and definitely threatening to the white middle class.

But the basic claim that structural racism exists has strong evidence behind it, and the idea that schools should teach about it in some way is probably a winning argument for progressives. (Almost half of college Republicans, in a recent poll, supported teaching about how “patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other institutions.”) Especially since not every application of the structural-racist diagnosis implies left-wing policy conclusions: The pro-life and school choice movements, for instance, regularly invoke the impact of past progressive racism on disproportionately high African-American abortion rates and underperforming public schools.

What’s really inflaming today’s fights, though, is that the structural-racist diagnosis isn’t being offered on its own. Instead it’s yoked to two sweeping theories about how to fight the problem it describes.

First, there is a novel theory of moral education, according to which the best way to deal with systemic inequality is to confront its white beneficiaries with their privileges and encourage them to wrestle with their sins.

Second, there is a Manichaean vision of public policy, in which all policymaking is either racist or antiracist, all racial disparities are the result of racism — and the measurement of any outcome short of perfect “equity” may be a form of structural racism itself.

The first idea is associated with Robin DiAngelo, the second with Ibram X. Kendi, and they converge in places like the work of Tema Okun, whose presentations train educators to see “white-supremacy culture” at work in traditional measures of academic attainment.

The impulses these ideas encourage take different forms in different institutions, but they usually circle around to similar goals. First, the attempt to use racial-education programs to construct a stronger sense of shared white identity, on the apparent theory that making Americans of European ancestry think of themselves as defined by a toxic “whiteness” will lead to its purgation. Second, the deconstruction of standards that manifest racial disparities, on the apparent theory that if we stop using gifted courses or standardized tests, the inequities they reveal will cease to matter.

These goals, it should be stressed, don’t follow necessarily from the theory of structural racism. The first idea arguably betrays the theory’s key insight, that you can have “racism without racists,” by deliberately trying to increase individual racial guilt. The second extends structural analysis beyond what it can reasonably bear, into territory where white supremacy supposedly explains Asian American success on the SAT.

But precisely because they don’t follow from modest and defensible conceptions of systemic racism, smart progressives in the media often retreat to those modest conceptions when challenged by conservatives — without acknowledging that the dubious conceptions are a big part of what’s been amplifying controversy, and conjuring up dubious Republican legislation in response.

Here one could say that figures like Kendi and DiAngelo, and the complex of foundations and bureaucracies that have embraced the new antiracism, increasingly play a similar role to talk radio in the Republican coalition. They represent an ideological extremism that embarrasses clever liberals, as the spirit of Limbaugh often embarrassed right-wing intellectuals. But this embarrassment encourages a pretense that their influence is modest, their excesses forgivable, and the real problem is always the evils of the other side.

That pretense worked out badly for the right, whose intelligentsia awoke in 2016 to discover that they no longer recognized their own coalition. It would be helpful if liberals currently dismissing anxiety over Kendian or DiAngelan ideas as just a “moral panic” experienced a similar awakening now — before progressivism simply becomes its excesses, and the way back to sanity is closed.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/opinion/antiracist-education-history.html

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What unconscious bias training gets wrong… and how to fix it

2021/07/05 Leave a comment

Good overview on the latest research and lessons. Main conclusion, no quick fix, has to be part of ongoing training and awareness:

Here’s a fact that cannot be disputed: if your name is James or Emily, you will find it easier to get a job than someone called Tariq or Adeola. Between November 2016 and December 2017, researchers sent out fake CVs and cover letters for 3,200 positions. Despite demonstrating exactly the same qualifications and experience, the “applicants” with common Pakistani or Nigerian names needed to send out 60% more applications to receive the same number of callbacks as applicants with more stereotypically British names.

Some of the people who had unfairly rejected Tariq or Adeola will have been overtly racist, and so deliberately screened people based on their ethnicity. According to a large body of psychological research, however, many will have also reacted with an implicit bias, without even being aware of the assumptions they were making.

Such findings have spawned a plethora of courses offering “unconscious bias and diversity training”, which aim to reduce people’s racist, sexist and homophobic tendencies. If you work for a large organisation, you’ve probably taken one yourself. Last year, Labour leader Keir Starmer volunteered to undergo such training after he appeared to dismiss the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement. “There is always the risk of unconscious bias, and just saying: ‘Oh well, it probably applies to other people, not me,’ is not the right thing to do,” he said. Even Prince Harry has been educating himself about his potential for implicit bias – and advising others to do the same.

Sounds sensible, doesn’t it? You remind people of their potential for prejudice so they can change their thinking and behaviour. Yet there is now a severe backlash against the very idea of unconscious bias and diversity training, with an increasing number of media articles lamenting these “woke courses” as a “useless” waste of money. The sceptics argue that there is little evidence that unconscious bias training works, leading some organisations – including the UK’s civil service – to cancel their schemes.

So what’s the truth? Is it ever possible to correct our biases? And if so, why have so many schemes failed to make a difference?

While the contents of unconscious bias and diversity training courses vary widely, most share a few core components. Participants will often be asked to complete the implicit association test (IAT), for example. By measuring people’s reaction times during a word categorisation task, an algorithm can calculate whether people have more positive or negative associations with a certain group – such as people of a different ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender. (You can try it for yourself on the Harvard website.)

After taking the IAT, participants will be debriefed about their results. They may then learn about the nature of unconscious bias and stereotypes more generally, and the consequences within the workplace, along with some suggestions to reduce the impact.

All of which sounds useful in theory. To confirm the benefits, however, you need to compare the attitudes and behaviours of employees who have taken unconscious bias and diversity training with those who have not – in much the same way that drugs are tested against a placebo.

Prof Edward Chang at Harvard Business School has led one of the most rigorous trials, delivering an hour-long online diversity course to thousands of employees at an international professional services company. Using tools like the IAT, the training was meant to educate people about sexist stereotypes and their consequences – and surveys suggest that it did change some attitudes. The participants reported greater acknowledgment of their own bias after the course, and greater support of women in the workplace, than people who had taken a more general course on “psychological safety” and “active listening”.

Unfortunately, this didn’t translate to the profound behavioural change you might expect. Three weeks after taking the course, the employees were given the chance of taking part in an informal mentoring scheme. Overall, the people who had taken the diversity course were no more likely to take on a female mentee. Six weeks after taking the course, the participants were also given the opportunity to nominate colleagues for recognition of their “excellence”. It could have been the perfect opportunity to offer some encouragement to overlooked women in the workplace. Once again, however, the people who had taken the diversity training were no more likely to nominate a female colleague than the control group.

“We did our best to design a training that would be effective,” Chang tells me. “But our results suggest that the sorts of one-off trainings that are commonplace in organisations are not particularly effective at leading to long-lasting behaviour change.”

Chang’s results chime with the broader conclusions of a recent report by Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which examined 18 papers on unconscious bias training programmes. Overall, the authors concluded that the courses are effective at raising awareness of bias, but the evidence of long-lasting behavioural change is “limited”.

Even the value of the IAT – which is central to so many of these courses – has been subject to scrutiny. The courses tend to use shortened versions of the test, and the same person’s results can vary from week to week. So while it might be a useful educational aid to explain the concept of unconscious bias, it is wrong to present the IAT as a reliable diagnosis of underlying prejudice.

It certainly sounds damning; little wonder certain quarters of the press have been so willing to declare these courses a waste of time and money. Yet the psychologists researching their value take a more nuanced view, and fear their conclusions have been exaggerated. While it is true that many schemes have ended in disappointment, some have been more effective, and researchers believe we should learn from these successes and failures to design better interventions in the future – rather than simply dismissing them altogether.

For one thing, many of the current training schemes are simply too brief to have the desired effect. “It’s usually part of the employee induction and lasts about 30 minutes to an hour,” says Dr Doyin Atewologun, a co-author of the EHRC’s report and founding member of British Psychological Society’s diversity and inclusion at work group. “It’s just tucked away into one of the standard training materials.” We should not be surprised the lessons are soon forgotten. In general, studies have shown that diversity training can have more pronounced effects if it takes place over a longer period of time. A cynic might suspect that these short programmes are simple box-ticking exercises, but Atewologun thinks the good intentions are genuine – it’s just that the organisations haven’t been thinking critically about the level of commitment that would be necessary to bring about change, or even how to measure the desired outcomes.

Thanks to this lack of forethought, many of the existing courses may have also been too passive and theoretical. “If you are just lecturing at someone about how pervasive bias is, but you’re not giving them the tools to change, I think there can be a tendency for them to think that bias is normal and thus not something they need to work on,” says Prof Alex Lindsey at the University of Memphis. Attempts to combat bias could therefore benefit from more evidence-based exercises that increase participants’ self-reflection, alongside concrete steps for improvement.

Lindsey’s research team recently examined the benefits of a “perspective-taking” exercise, in which participants were asked to write about the challenges faced by someone within a minority group. They found that the intervention brought about lasting changes to people’s attitudes and behavioural intentions for months after the training. “We might not know exactly what it’s like to be someone of a different race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation from ourselves, but everyone, to some extent, knows what it feels like to be excluded in a social situation,” Lindsey says. “Once trainees realise that some people face that kind of ostracism on a more regular basis as a result of their demographic characteristics, I think that realisation can lead them to respond more empathetically in the future.”

Lindsey has found that you should also encourage participants to reflect on the ways their own behaviour may have been biased in the past, and to set themselves future goals during their training. Someone will be much more likely to act in an inclusive way if they decide, in advance, to challenge any inappropriate comments about a minority group, for example. This may be more powerful still, he says, if there is some kind of follow-up to check in with participants’ progress – an opportunity that the briefer courses completely miss. (Interestingly, he has found that these reflective techniques can be especially effective among people who are initially resistant to the idea of diversity training.)

More generally, these courses may often fail to bring about change because people become too defensive about the very idea that they may be prejudiced. Without excusing the biases, the courses might benefit from explaining how easily stereotypes can be absorbed – even by good, well-intentioned people – while also emphasising the individual responsibility to take action. Finally, they could teach people to recognise the possibility of “moral licensing”, in which an ostensibly virtuous act, such as attending the diversity course itself, or promoting someone from a minority, excuses a prejudiced behaviour afterwards, since you’ve already “proven” yourself to be a liberal and caring person. 

Ultimately, the psychologists I’ve spoken to all agree that organisations should stop seeing unconscious bias and diversity training as a quick fix, and instead use it as the foundation for broader organisational change.

“Anyone who has been in any type of schooling system knows that even the best two- or three-hour class is not going to change our world for ever,” says Prof Calvin Lai, who investigates implicit bias at Washington University in St Louis. “It’s not magic.” But it may act as a kind of ice-breaker, he says, helping people to be more receptive to other initiatives – such as those aimed at a more inclusive recruitment process.

Chang agrees. “Diversity training is unlikely to be an effective standalone solution,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be an effective component of a multipronged approach to improving diversity, equity and inclusion in organisations.”

Atewologun compares it to the public health campaigns to combat obesity and increase fitness. You can provide people with a list of the calories in different foods and the benefits of exercise, she says – but that information, alone, is unlikely to lead to significant weight loss, without continued support that will help people to act on that information. Similarly, education about biases can be a useful starting point, but it’s rather absurd to expect that ingrained habits could evaporate in a single hour of education.

“We could be a lot more explicit that it is step one,” Atewologun adds. “We need multiple levels of intervention – it’s an ongoing project.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/25/what-unconscious-bias-training-gets-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it

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Marche: If Canada wants to be healthy and decent and prosperous and stable, it needs to face its demons

2021/07/03 Leave a comment

One of the better commentaries. A friend suggested “the good, the bad and the ugly” which just about sums it up:

No country can be realistic about itself. Nations live by myths, both in the sense of collective stories that give meaning, and in the sense of lies. Ordinarily, the myths permeate the background of national life, unobserved and assumed. There are days when the myths go on display, like Canada Day, when everyone goes out and waves flags and talks about how lucky they are to live here. 

Then there are other days when the myths shatter, like when investigators discover the bodies of 751 Indigenous children in unmarked graves. This year the myth-displaying and the myth-shattering have come very close together, almost simultaneously. 

Canada is far from alone in finding an uncomfortable duality surrounding the stories it tells itself, a confusion of pride and horror. There’s a strange contradiction at play all around the world: The more successful a country is the less likely it is to celebrate itself. 

Anyone who has visited Germany over the past seventy years will have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of historical memory to be consumed. Germans reckon with the evils of their past in a continuous way. It’s not just Holocaust memorials and museums. There are over 75,000 stumbling stones in Germany, small brass plaques on the streets each identifying a separate national disgrace — a family sent to a concentration camp, a business burned to the ground. Their confrontation with horror, their humility in facing it, has had serious political consequences. It is no coincidence that Germany has become the world’s leading democracy, one of the most stable, prosperous and decent nations in the world. They have put the spiritual work in. 

Contrast Germany with Britain. On June 25, British schools celebrated “One Britain One Nation Day” in which the Education Secretary encouraged all school age children to sing the “Strong Britain, Great Nation” song. “We are British and we have one dream,” it begins, and the chorus which repeats itself ad nauseam is “Strong Britain, Great nation!” The sheer creepiness of the totalitarian esthetic is grotesque. But I honestly felt sorry for the British after I heard “Strong Britain, Great Nation.” Somebody had to commission that piece of music. Somebody had to compose it. Somebody’s children had to sing it. It’s so humiliating for everyone involved. 

England has chosen to decline in a fit of make-believe Imperialist nostalgia, embodied perfectly by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In 2016, 44 per cent of Britains agreed with the statement that the British Empire was “something to be proud of.” Through Brexit, they have paid a heavy price for their comforting myths of their own magnificence: a sharp decline in global influence, a shrinking economy and the instability of the Union itself. The contrast between the rhetoric and the reality is growing ever more extreme: Five years after their great splurge to “take back control,” they don’t even have control over shipments of sausages to Northern Ireland. I guess that’s why they need to sing ridiculous hymns to their own strength. 

It’s not that the Germans are somehow better people than the English. It’s not that Germany doesn’t have its own problems with nationalism. It’s that Germany has chosen to reckon with its own history problems rather than pretend them away. In the case of America, the matter is starker: Four years of “Make America Great Again” have led to a political system in mid-collapse. Hollering for American greatness led to suffering American catastrophe. 

What all of this shows is simple enough intellectually if hard to grasp emotionally: If you want your country to be healthy and decent and prosperous and stable, you should want it to face its demons. “I think Canada is a great historical achievement,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said recently. “It is an imperfect country, but it is still a great country, just as John Macdonald was an imperfect man but was still a great leader.” Kenney was not exactly wrong (the full text of his remarks is far more nuanced and reasonable than the reaction to the sound bite clips would lead anyone to believe) but, to me, the frame of his question is a false dichotomy: Every country is imperfect just as every person is imperfect. Facing the imperfections is what patriotism looks like, not turning away from them. The celebration and the confrontation must occur together to be meaningful.

Quite apart from the political future of Canada’s relationship to Indigenous communities, the process of truth and reconciliation is essential for our own survival. Every former residential school in this country should be a museum. Every school age child should visit one. These locations are the very black diamond of our national evil. We must face them not because we hate Canada but because we love it. The honour of this country is at stake, and Canadian honour is worth fighting for. It is our duty to fight for it. 

Four hundred thousand people are going to move to Canada next year. That’s not a myth. That’s a fact. They’re not moving here for the weather. There is a great deal in Canada that is lovable, but love comes at a cost. Let’s celebrate this country, but quietly this year. Let’s celebrate, but remember.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/analysis/2021/07/01/if-canada-wants-to-be-healthy-and-decent-and-prosperous-and-stable-it-needs-to-face-its-demons.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_recommended_for_you

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Mahmud Jamal’s nomination to Canada’s Supreme Court scores a win against the name barrier

2021/07/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

A few years ago, frustrated that I kept being detained at airports just because my name bore a resemblance to someone who was on a terrorist watchlist, I decided to adopt a middle name.

At the time, I struggled with what name I should choose. I thought long and hard about taking an Anglo-Saxon one, so as to appear less threatening to airport authorities. However, the thought of having to change an integral part of myself in order to live my life without unnecessary incursions based on the notion that I posed a danger irked me inside. Why should I have to do it, when others don’t? This is a dissonance that I imagine most immigrants or children of recent immigrants face as they navigate their professional lives. How much of your cultural heritage do you keep? And what is worth shedding as you attempt to move up the rungs of Canadian society?

So rather than anglicizing my name, I adopted the Arabic middle name Majid, after my maternal grandfather Abdul-Majid. At the time, I knew my decision could actually attract more scrutiny at airports, rather than less. It also provided another opportunity for others to misspell, mispronounce or generally feel uncomfortable saying my name.

That prospect was ingrained in my mind, as those were all experiences I underwent growing up as a South Asian-Canadian in the relatively small and homogeneous city of St. Catharines, Ont., where even well-meaning people struggled to say my name in what would be considered its “authentic” Arabic pronunciation. I found myself too shy to correct them – either out of a sense of fear or, otherwise, because I didn’t deem myself important enough to canvass a conversation around my name and, more essentially, my parent’s culture and ancestral history.

But with the accumulated baggage of life deep in the recesses of my mind, I felt some sense of vindication when Mahmud Jamal was nominated recently to the Supreme Court of Canada. Upon his appointment, he will be the first person of colour to serve on our country’s highest court.

With Justice Jamal’s appointment, as well as other recent high-profile appointments – including the selection of Reem Bahdi as the next dean of the University of Windsor’s law school – we are starting to see the erosion of both name and colour barriers in the upper echelons of the legal profession. Even the most reticent and conservative lawyers will now have to come face to face with a sitting judge who does not look like anyone from the past. 

Moreover, they will be forced to write and pronounce Justice Jamal’s name (correctly, I hope) under a new dynamic in which a member of a racialized minority group now occupies a seat of power.

For most of us who come from racialized communities, the authority that Justice Jamal will exercise from the high court is not the overwhelming reality of our existence. Rather, in Canada, we are often placed in hierarchal relationships in which an individual with an Anglo-Saxon name occupies the more authoritative position. 

So when our names are pronounced incorrectly, confused with someone else’s or even neglected, we find ourselves biting our tongues so as to avoid upsetting the status quo. This was my childhood reality and, for many, a lifelong one. This scenario has become exhausting and increasingly depressing as we await the promised inclusiveness of the country we or our parents chose.

Just as I refused to anglicize my middle name, my wife and I chose an “ethnic” name for our son when he was born two years ago. We were not ignorant of the realities we grew up in and that persist until today with regard to pronouncing and, by inference, accepting foreign-sounding names. As such, we chose a name for him that could be pronounced by the array of ethnic communities that compose our great land without the sense of trepidation that I have always thought those around me have felt. But erasing our ancestry altogether was not an option. And for us and others in our position, the nomination of Justice Jamal stands to makes us more comfortable in our shoes, not afraid to express our cultural identities all the while attempting to break whatever glass ceilings remain.

The choice that I made to affirm my roots through my middle name was a difficult one. It required concerted thought and effort. Thanks in part to the appointment of a man whose name is making history, my son will not have to take the same pains to reconcile his heritage and his ambitions.

Hassan M. Ahmad is a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-mahmud-jamals-nomination-to-canadas-supreme-court-is-a-win-for/

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Citizenship by investment schemes – more than meets the eye?

2021/07/03 2 Comments

Good overview of some of the abuses and corruption with these programs:

No longer solely related to family heritage or place of birth, citizenship has now become a tangible commodity. This is possible due to citizenship and residency by investment (CRBI) schemes. First introduced by the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis, CRBI offers citizenship or permanent residency to foreign nationals in exchange for cash investments. Dubbed “golden visas,” these investment opportunities grant foreigners legal status in these nations. For the fortunate few, they provide individuals with real estate opportunities and visa-free travel to different countries, writes Louis Auge.

Valued at approximately $25 billion (£20bn) per year in 2019, this industry is on the rise. With the ability to stimulate the local economy, many countries were quick to implement St. Kitts’ measures. From Portugal to St. Lucia to the United States, CRBI is possible in many jurisdictions across the world. However, the minimum capital requirement, timeframe for approval, and visa-free destinations provided per country vary drastically.

Based on these requirements, leading consulting companies in the CRBI industry have consolidated most of their businesses in the Caribbean. With five countries offering CRBI in this region, individuals are quick to invest due to the region’s experience with CRBI along with their secrecy laws. With an investment as low as $100,000 individuals can get citizenship in countries such as St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica.

Proponents have been quick to defend the benefits for both the investor and the host country, but the morality of these schemes are questionable. Locals in rural villages within CRBI countries have yet to see the effect of these investments. With a tolerance for corruption, there are stories across multiple jurisdictions of politicians taking a cut of each visa payment.

By placing a price tag on their citizenship, countries risk becoming a haven for criminals. CRBI schemes have been associated with hallmarks of criminality from tax evasion to money laundering. The taint of questionable activities does not stop with the clients of CRBI schemes either. Firms specializing in setting up and facilitating CRBI schemes have never been far from scandal.

The actions of CRBI consulting companies such as Henley and Partners and CS Global Partners have been questioned on multiple occasions. Recently, CS Global, established by a former senior figure at Henley and Partners, faced allegations of interfering in Dominica’s 2015 election campaign, making donations to PM Roosevelt Skerrit’s successful run for the leadership. Both sides deny the allegation.

The recent media surrounding Gurdip ‘Dev’ Bath is a case in point. As the former director of CS Global, Bath is well versed in the CRBI industry. Bath has established strong relations with government officials across the Caribbean. Indian by background and ordinarily resident in London, Bath holds a diplomatic passport from St. Kitts, in a capacity that remains unexplained.

Additionally, he has close ties with Hardip ‘Peter’ Virdee, a businessman from London who has been willing to pay bribesaccording to the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency. These relationships have tarnished his reputation as a self-described ‘diplomat.’ Bath has also been seen and had high-level meetings with senior Indian officials including the Prime Minister. His current role  at CS Global, which specializes in CRBI in Dominica and St. Kitts, begs one to question his role in the company’s current Dominican scandal.

Unfortunately for Bath, his recent mentions across the media have taken a turn for the worse. Accused of planning and executing the recent kidnapping of Indian businessman Mehul Choksi, the scandal has the CRBI specialist caught up in alleged human rights violations.

Choksi was allegedly kidnapped from Antigua on 23 May 2021. Two days later, he was found in Dominica by local authorities. Arrested for illegally entering the country, Choksi currently awaits trial in Dominica.

Choksi and his lawyers point to evidence that he was kidnapped and taken to Dominica against his will. They have argued that Bath worked with the governments of Dominica as well as Antigua and Barbuda, possibly at the request of the Indian government, as part of a plan to bring Choksi to India, where he is wanted for charges of fraud.

In their report to the British police’s War Crimes Unit, Choksi’s defense additionally accused Bath’s associates Barbara Jarabik, Gurjit Singh Bhandal, and Gurmit Singh of being accomplices in Choksi’s kidnap and torture. Moreover, they note India’s apparent involvement, as a private charter jet containing documents regarding Choki’s extradition, was sent to Dominica from Dehli.

Bath’s case echoes that of Alireza Zibahalat Monfared, the ‘right hand’ of Iranian oil tycoon Babak Zanjani, convicted in 2016 of largest ever fraud to hit that country. After an international manhunt, Monfared was discovered and arrested in Dominica, where he too was living on a diplomatic passport. An Al-Jazeera investigation in 2019 showed how Caribbean nations offer ‘the protection or shield’ of diplomatic immunity to ‘international criminals’. The UK’s Geoffrey Robertson QC describes these programmes as an ‘international scandal’.

Henley and Partners, pioneers of CRBI schemes and closely associated with CS Global, suffered a reputational setback in 2021 when its email database was leaked to The Guardian newspaper. The leaks demonstrated how Henley helped clients to create a pretence that they were “resident” in the country for a full year by renting apartments and then leaving them empty. The company had previously come under fire in the Spectator magazine, which detailed Henley and Partners’ close links to Cambridge Analytica, as well as its involvement and potential interference in election campaigns in the Caribbean.

British MP Ben Bradshaw, speaking in Parliament in 2018, called on the UK government to support an investigation into the death of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Bradshaw noted that the journalist, killed in a car bomb, was investigating Pilatus Bank, Cambridge Analytica and Henley and Partners at the time. Henley and Partners has strongly denied all of the allegations.

In response to these allegations, along with the discontent from Caribbean residents, one might question the future of CRBI. Will the industry clean up its image, dropping associations with secrecy and criminality, or will wealthier nations work to stamp out the practice? For nations like the US, UK and the Gulf states, these firms and their clients are associated with lower tax receipts, international fugitives and a constant drip of scandal. It may not be long before their patience runs out.

Source: Citizenship by investment schemes – more than meets the eye?

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‘Another political extravaganza?’ Muslim academics, community members skeptical about what might be achieved at Islamophobia summit

2021/07/03 Leave a comment

Some merit to this reaction as summits tend to be one-time events, often more symbolic recognition of affected groups with limited ongoing impact and change. This does not make the motives for holding them insincere, just that their impact is limited.

The many meetings and conferences regarding antisemitism have not reduced the number of antisemitic incidents, for example:

A National Summit on Islamophobia will be held this month, in the wake of a deadly truck attack in London, Ont. that left multiple members of the same family dead and as violent incidents of street harassment against Muslim women have been reported in Alberta.

But with scarce details available about the virtual event, including its date, and with the history of inaction on Islamophobia at federal and provincial levels, Muslim academics and community members are skeptical about what might be achieved.

They told the Star they fear governments may be providing the same empty words and promises that emerged in years past, including after the Quebec City mosque shooting.

Discussions where governments consulted with community members about how to tackle Islamophobia and hate have happened before — and the moment for talking has passed, they say. It’s now time to dismantle policies that limit the rights of Muslim people in Canada, said Fatimah Jackson-Best, a public health researcher and lecturer at York University.

“We don’t need a summit to know [about Islamophobia], we see this happening in our news. We need action,” she said. “There are some pressing issues around safety and freedom of religion and expression that we need policy on expeditiously,” she said.

Jackson-Best cites Bill 21 in Quebec, which bans the wearing of religious symbols for public servants, as discriminatory as it disproportionately impacts Muslim women who are not able to dress the way they want and wear the hijab in jobs in the province, including as lawyers or teachers.

Along with an honest discussion about standing up against Bill 21, the summit would also need to feature a multitude of voices to reflect the vast diversity of Canada’s Muslim community. Black Muslims, refugees and those of lower income need to be spotlighted, she explained.

She’s not interested in empty discussions on topics of which the community and politicians are already aware.

“Is [the summit] going to be another political extravaganza?” she asked. “There was nearly an entire family killed in London due to Islamophobia. This is getting very dire, so I’m just anxious to hear what kind of summit it will be.”

Calls for a summit grew after the June 6 attack in London that saw Salman Afzaal, 46, Madiha Salman, 44, Yumna Afzaal, 15, Fayez Afzaal, 9, and Talat Afzaal, 74, targeted for their faith while they were out for an evening walk. Fayez was treated in hospital and was the sole survivor.

In the weeks since the murders there have been violent incidents targeting Muslim women in Edmonton, including an attack where a woman wearing a hijab was pushed to the ground and knocked unconscious, while another woman had a knife held to her throat.

The office of Canada’s Diversity and Inclusion Minister Bardish Chagger told the Star Wednesday evening that on June 11 the government committed to hosting the summit and that she “would like to assure all Canadians that work began that very day. This is an important step as we recognize that systemic action is necessary and needed.”

Chagger said the federal government has been committed to tackling Islamophobia since it took office, by passing M-103, which was a motion to condemn Islamophobia, and by developing Canada’s anti-racism strategy, creating the anti-racism secretariat along with adding white supremacist groups to Canada’s terror list.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims has put out a call for policy submissionsfor the summit that it will include in the final report it presents there.

Combating street harassment, specifically where hijab-wearing Muslim women are targeted, along with putting another 250 white supremacist groups on Canada’s list of terrorist organizations are just some of the issues the NCCM plans to raise, said spokesperson Fatema Abdalla.

A petition by the NCCM in June asking for Ottawa to convene a summit amassed more than 40,000 signatures.

Calls for a summit to address Islamophobia are not new and have been discussed since incidents of hate increased after 9/11, nearly 20 years ago, said Faisal Kutty, a lawyer and adjunct law professor at York University.

Anti-terror measures implemented at the time that have seen many innocent Muslim Canadians placed on no-fly lists, impeding their ability to work and travel, continue to be a major issue, he said.

Provincial and federal governments have portrayed the Muslim community as a threat and they have a track record of making hate towards Muslims worse, not better, Kutty explained.

“The government has played a significant role in breeding Islamophobia. The onus is on them to take the initiative to rectify the situation,” he said.

Kutty says he’s doubtful real policy that will help communities, like launching a national database on all hate crimes, will emerge from the summit.

He points to the failure by the government to pass real policy changes following the January 2017 mosque shooting in Quebec City that left six dead and five others seriously injured.

In 2017 following the attack, the House of Commons passed M-103 with a vote of 201-91, which was a non-binding motion that condemned Islamophobia. The majority of Conservative MPs voted against it.

As a result of that motion, a Heritage committee report with 30 recommendations on hate, systemic racism and Islamophobia was published and included creating a national action plan and improved data collection on hate crimes.

Other than declaring Jan. 29 a day of remembrance for the Quebec Mosque attack, not much was implemented from the report, said Kutty.

“That’s why I’m saying the track record has not been good,” he said. “The fact that people are acknowledging it and saying they want to do something about it is an improvement, but until we see action … I can’t really say we’re going to see too many improvements.”

After the June attack in London, a motion presented at Queen’s Park by Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter called on the legislature to condemn all forms of Islamophobia and commit to a six-month plan to tackle anti-Muslim hate in the province, including dismantling hundreds of white supremacist groups. It also called for support of the national summit.

But the province ended up tabling its own version of the motion that, while including condemning Islamophobia, did not include the six-month plan commitment, Hunter told the Star.

In a statement, the Ministry of the Solicitor General told the Star the province condemns all forms of hatred including Islamophobia and cited its anti-racism strategic plan that includes working with the Muslim community to tackle hate.

On Tuesday, Ontario also pledged $300,000 to Muslim organizations to address Islamophobia in schools.

The anti-racism directorate within the anti-racism strategic plan doesn’t have the resources it needs and is another instance where current government policies aren’t working, said Amira Elghawaby, a founding member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which monitors, exposes and counters hate groups.

She said she hopes at the very least the summit will symbolize that governments are finally agreeing on the urgency of the issue.

“We finally got past the point of people still denying the reality of Islamophobia. And now we are starting to move toward addressing it, but it won’t happen overnight,” said Elghawaby.

Jasmine Zine, a sociology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, was the co-chair of the Islamophobia subcommittee under Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government. But it was dismantled when Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government was elected in 2018 and there is now a lack of proactive approach to Islamophobia — with statements and funding only emerging when there is an attack, said Zine.

“There’s been a lot of lost opportunities,” she said, referring to M-103, echoing Kutty’s comments about the 30 recommendations not being implemented.

She said she is unsure whether the summit will end up being politicians posturing, especially ahead of a possible fall federal election.

“It’s hard to feel that there’s a lot of sincerity when after the last terror attack there were opportunities to do something and they were not taken,” she said.

“So here we are again. It’s like déjà vu for a lot of us.”

Source: ‘Another political extravaganza?’ Muslim academics, community members skeptical about what might be achieved at Islamophobia summit

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Citizenship study guide remains outdated in its ‘simplistic’ account of Indigenous history, critics say

2021/07/03 Leave a comment

Ironically, a simplistic article on the citizenship guide, citing only one activist and the NDP critic, and no reference to the previous guide’s, A Look at Canada, lack of reference to residential schools, and no detailed comments from the IRCC media folks unlike other CBC articles.

And while NDP immigration critic is correct in her critique of the government’s slow progress, she should look in the mirror as by and large her focus has been on immigration and refugees, not citizenship (like most MPs given constituent pressures):

When Nazanin Moghadami started reading the Discover Canada guidebook in 2018 to prepare for her citizenship exam, she says she felt like she was being lied to about the country’s real history.

While there were paragraphs about Hudson’s Bay and hockey, she says she found nothing helpful and accurate about Indigenous history, treaties and residential schools.

“It was the most triggering text I have read in a long time,” recalls Moghadami, who said she had educated herself about Indigenous history and culture before she started preparing for her citizenship test.

She had also taken the Indigenous Canada course, which explores key issues Indigenous peoples face today, before she picked up the citizenship guidebook.

On June 22, Canada adopted a revised citizenship oath that recognizes First Nations, Inuit and Métis rights.

But a revised Discover Canada study guide has yet to be revealed, something a number of Canadians say is needed to reflect a more inclusive history of Indigenous Peoples, treaties and residential schools.

“Reading [Discover Canada] felt like a bunch of lies, a very simplistic version of history in a way that was very biased and very much favoured picturing Europeans in a good light, really whitewashing the violence. It just sounded very hypocritical,” said Moghadami, who immigrated to Canada from Iran in 2005.

‘When Europeans explored Canada …’

Discover Canada was last updated in 2012.

That’s despite two of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action in 2015 urging the federal government to update the citizenship guide and test, as well as the oath, to reflect a more inclusive history of Indigenous Peoples and a recognition of their treaties and rights.

Source: Citizenship study guide remains outdated in its ‘simplistic’ account of Indigenous history, critics say

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A digitally modernized immigration ecosystem in Canada: Reflecting on the roundtable, Strengthening Canada’s Immigration Ecosystem

2021/07/02 Leave a comment

Summary of roundtable discussions based upon a Deloitte study on immigration modernization (I was one of the external experts consulted in their study, not yet posted on their website):

On June 18th, 2021, the Public Policy Forum brought together over 30 experts and practitioners in the immigration space in Canada. The roundtable, Strengthening Canada’s Immigration Ecosystem, focused on a digitally enabled modernized immigration system. The consensus was clear: A modernized immigration system is necessary, and any such modernizations must be inclusive, immigrant centred, and must not perpetuate biases within the system. Katie Davey, Policy Lead at Public Policy Forum and Fatemah Ebrahim, Policy Associate at Public Policy Forum reflect on the roundtable conversation: 

For a system to work, it must work for everyone using it. Technology is not a one size fits all approach to solutions; however, modernization efforts have the potential to leverage technology and digital solutions for the benefit of all. Implemented with the right considerations, a digitally modernized immigration system has the potential to significantly reduce pain points and become more responsive, and immigrant centred while also freeing up human resources to support the most challenging case work. While a digitally enabled system is part of the solution, it is not a panacea. Digital for the sake of digital risks leaving people out in the cold, and perpetuating issues and biases that exist.  

The Government of Canada recognized the importance of immigration in post-pandemic recovery and GDP growth in Budget 2021. The budget included reforms to the Express Entry Program, enhancements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and extensions to the Racialized Newcomer Women Pilot initiative. It committed to accelerating pathways for permanent residency as well as enabling Statistics Canada to address the lack of data needed to support evidence-based decision making on social and racial inequities. Budget 2021 also included $430 million to modernize information technology infrastructure to allow for improved application processing, better security, and higher levels of future foreign national arrivals. These commitments create the opportunity for much needed transformation.  

COVID-19 has accelerated the case for transformation and has propelled many governments to expedite their digital and technology capabilities to respond effectively during this crisis. As it stands, Canada’s immigration system operates on outdated technology and remains largely paper based; although the pandemic resulted in some short-term technology enabled solutions creating a good foundation to build on. At the same time, these COVID capabilities also demonstrated that flexibility within the system will be needed to avoid an unintentional rigidness that leaves people out. The competition for global talent is only increasing as mature economies grapple with stalling birth rates and labour force demands.  

Although Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) continues to set ambitious immigration targets, most metrics are highly unpredictable, including number of newcomers who become citizens each year. Focus has been placed on the supply side of immigration while labour force demands continue to be unmet. Conversations like foreign credential recognition have been on the agenda for years — especially in the healthcare sector; however little movement has been made. Digital modernization may provide new opportunities to address these persisting policy challenges by providing information and transparency. These brief examples are only two of many that provide a foundation for the case of modernization within the immigration sector. 

The focus of a modernized system should be a process that moves towards settlement supports and pathways to citizenship. At a fundamental level, digital modernization is a mindset shift and should offer an accessible, safe, and informative tool to enhance how a newcomer moves through the system.  

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) sets out three classes of migrants: those entering for economic immigration, for family reunification, and as refugees. There is a prioritization of the economic class over the family or refugee class which is one example of the underlying and at times, explicit bias built into Canada’s immigration system. Bias also exists within the technology and tools often used to enhance modernization. Further, data protection remains a concern in most areas of technology, and some may have serious and founded concerns about the potential surveillance that could be empowered by a tool holding all their immigration data in one place. These realities are risks of digital modernization. 

Another risk present in the digital government literature is the 80-20 principle often inherent in technology and policy development. It would suggest that a technology build out may serve just one part of the immigration ecosystem and leave those with more complex paths outside of the modernization journey. Consideration should be given to inclusive and equitable modernization that builds for the margins. The most common use case should be replaced with the most complex use case – if the system builds for that, it will naturally also serve the most common case. At the same time, digital modernization presents the opportunity to reorient resources to supporting those with a higher level of need. 

Attracting, welcoming, and retaining immigrants are vital if Canada is to remain competitive on the world stage. Digital modernization is a key element of a broader policy modernization landscape. Canada’s immigration system focuses heavily on the economic class, and any steps toward digital modernization has a risk of building for that class alone. A modernized system must address biases present and reinforced through technology. More needs to be done to build an anti-racist immigration ecosystem; one that supports all categories of migrants and provides equitable access and support through the application and naturalization processes. There is a tremendous opportunity for Canada’s immigration system to continue being the envy of the world. Although the Canadian immigration conversation often centres economic growth and competitiveness, newcomers to Canada are people and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect – technology is a tool to help move us toward a system that prioritizes newcomers.  

Source: https://ppforum.ca/policy-speaking/a-digitally-modernized-immigration-ecosystem-in-canada/

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Using A.I. to Find Bias in A.I.

2021/07/02 Leave a comment

In 2018, Liz O’Sullivan and her colleagues at a prominent artificial intelligence start-up began work on a system that could automatically remove nudity and other explicit images from the internet.

They sent millions of online photos to workers in India, who spent weeks adding tags to explicit material. The data paired with the photos would be used to teach A.I. software how to recognize indecent images. But once the photos were tagged, Ms. O’Sullivan and her team noticed a problem: The Indian workers had classified all images of same-sex couples as indecent.

For Ms. O’Sullivan, the moment showed how easily — and often — bias could creep into artificial intelligence. It was a “cruel game of Whac-a-Mole,” she said.

This month, Ms. O’Sullivan, a 36-year-old New Yorker, was named chief executive of a new company, Parity. The start-up is one of many organizations, including more than a dozen start-ups and some of the biggest names in tech, offering tools and services designed to identify and remove bias from A.I. systems.

Soon, businesses may need that help. In April, the Federal Trade Commission warned against the sale of A.I. systems that were racially biased or could prevent individuals from receiving employment, housing, insurance or other benefits. A week later, the European Union unveiled draft regulations that could punish companies for offering such technology.

It is unclear how regulators might police bias. This past week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government research lab whose work often informs policy, released a proposal detailing how businesses can fight bias in A.I., including changes in the way technology is conceived and built.

Many in the tech industry believe businesses must start preparing for a crackdown. “Some sort of legislation or regulation is inevitable,” said Christian Troncoso, the senior director of legal policy for the Software Alliance, a trade group that represents some of the biggest and oldest software companies. “Every time there is one of these terrible stories about A.I., it chips away at public trust and faith.”

Over the past several years, studies have shown that facial recognition services, health care systems and even talking digital assistants can be biased against women, people of color and other marginalized groups. Amid a growing chorus of complaints over the issue, some local regulators have already taken action.

In late 2019, state regulators in New York opened an investigationof UnitedHealth Group after a study found that an algorithm used by a hospital prioritized care for white patients over Black patients, even when the white patients were healthier. Last year, the state investigated the Apple Card credit service after claims it was discriminating against women. Regulators ruled that Goldman Sachs, which operated the card, did not discriminate, while the status of the UnitedHealth investigation is unclear. 

A spokesman for UnitedHealth, Tyler Mason, said the company’s algorithm had been misused by one of its partners and was not racially biased. Apple declined to comment.

More than $100 million has been invested over the past six months in companies exploring ethical issues involving artificial intelligence, after $186 million last year, according to PitchBook, a research firm that tracks financial activity.

But efforts to address the problem reached a tipping point this month when the Software Alliance offered a detailed framework for fighting bias in A.I., including the recognition that some automated technologies require regular oversight from humans. The trade group believes the document can help companies change their behavior and can show regulators and lawmakers how to control the problem.

Though they have been criticized for bias in their own systems, Amazon, IBM, Google and Microsoft also offer tools for fighting it.

Ms. O’Sullivan said there was no simple solution to bias in A.I. A thornier issue is that some in the industry question whether the problem is as widespread or as harmful as she believes it is.

“Changing mentalities does not happen overnight — and that is even more true when you’re talking about large companies,” she said. “You are trying to change not just one person’s mind but many minds.”

When she started advising businesses on A.I. bias more than two years ago, Ms. O’Sullivan was often met with skepticism. Many executives and engineers espoused what they called “fairness through unawareness,” arguing that the best way to build equitable technology was to ignore issues like race and gender.

Increasingly, companies were building systems that learned tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data, including photos, sounds, text and stats. The belief was that if a system learned from as much data as possible, fairness would follow.

But as Ms. O’Sullivan saw after the tagging done in India, bias can creep into a system when designers choose the wrong data or sort through it in the wrong way. Studies show that face-recognition services can be biased against women and people of color when they are trained on photo collections dominated by white men.

Designers can be blind to these problems. The workers in India — where gay relationships were still illegal at the time and where attitudes toward gays and lesbians were very different from those in the United States — were classifying the photos as they saw fit.

Ms. O’Sullivan saw the flaws and pitfalls of artificial intelligence while working for Clarifai, the company that ran the tagging project. She said she had left the company after realizing it was building systems for the military that she believed could eventually be used to kill. Clarifai did not respond to a request for comment. 

She now believes that after years of public complaints over bias in A.I. — not to mention the threat of regulation — attitudes are changing. In its new framework for curbing harmful bias, the Software Alliance warned against fairness through unawareness, saying the argument did not hold up.

“They are acknowledging that you need to turn over the rocks and see what is underneath,” Ms. O’Sullivan said.

Still, there is resistance. She said a recent clash at Google, where two ethics researchers were pushed out, was indicative of the situation at many companies. Efforts to fight bias often clash with corporate culture and the unceasing push to build new technology, get it out the door and start making money.

It is also still difficult to know just how serious the problem is. “We have very little data needed to model the broader societal safety issues with these systems, including bias,” said Jack Clark, one of the authors of the A.I. Index, an effort to track A.I. technology and policy across the globe. “Many of the things that the average person cares about — such as fairness — are not yet being measured in a disciplined or a large-scale way.”

Ms. O’Sullivan, a philosophy major in college and a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, is building her company around a tool designed by Rumman Chowdhury, a well-known A.I. ethics researcher who spent years at the business consultancy Accenture before joining Twitter.

While other start-ups, like Fiddler A.I. and Weights and Biases, offer tools for monitoring A.I. services and identifying potentially biased behavior, Parity’s technology aims to analyze the data, technologies and methods a business uses to build its services and then pinpoint areas of risk and suggest changes.

The tool uses artificial intelligence technology that can be biased in its own right, showing the double-edged nature of A.I. — and the difficulty of Ms. O’Sullivan’s task.

Tools that can identify bias in A.I. are imperfect, just as A.I. is imperfect. But the power of such a tool, she said, is to pinpoint potential problems — to get people looking closely at the issue.

Ultimately, she explained, the goal is to create a wider dialogue among people with a broad range of views. The trouble comes when the problem is ignored — or when those discussing the issues carry the same point of view.

“You need diverse perspectives. But can you get truly diverse perspectives at one company?” Ms. O’Sullivan asked. “It is a very important question I am not sure I can answer.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/technology/artificial-intelligence-bias.html

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 30 June Update, Canadian excess deaths

2021/07/01 Leave a comment

The latest charts, compiled 30 June as overall rates in Canada continue to decline along with increased vaccinations (still largely first dose, fully vaccinated 30 percent, comparable to most EU countries).

Vaccinations: Ontario ahead of USA, all provinces ahead of EU countries, China ahead of Italy in total vaccinations but lower than EU countries in terms of fully vaccinated (16 percent).

Trendline charts

Infections per million: Surge in delta variant has resulted in UK moving ahead of Italy.

Deaths per million: Canadian North now ahead of Atlantic Canada.

Vaccinations per million: Gap between Canada and other G7 countries continues to grow. Gap between China and India narrows (14.4% compared to 13.0%).

Weekly

Infections per million: UK ahead of Italy

Deaths per million: Canadian North ahead of Atlantic Canada, reflecting additional death in Yukon.

And the excess deaths report, indicating that Canadian COVID mortality has been understated (not unique to Canada):

A new study suggests Canada has vastly underestimated how many people have died from COVID-19 and says the number could be two times higher than reported.

Dr. Tara Moriarty, working group lead for the study commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada, said in an interview while most accounts have put the majority of deaths in long-term care, the new data analysis suggests the toll of COVID-19 was also heavily felt outside the homes in the community.

Many of those deaths likely occurred in lower income, racialized communities and affected essential workers, new immigrants and people living in multigenerational homes, as well as clinically frail seniors living at home, the study says.

“If we’d had some sense early on of who was dying where, if we had had a sense of just how many deaths were actually occurring … maybe people would have started looking sooner or listening sooner to people in communities who were saying, ‘It’s really really bad here, people are dying,'” Moriarty said.

“It might have provided support for those claims that might have caused some kind of action that would have saved lives.”

Moriarty said seeing Canada out of step with similar high-income countries on the proportion of long-term care deaths was a red flag that inspired the analysis by the society.

The new peer-reviewed analysis casts doubt on the widely accepted assumption that 80 per cent of Canada’s deaths due to COVID-19 occurred among older adult residents of long-term care homes.

Instead, it says at least two-thirds of deaths caused by COVID-19 in communities outside of long-term care may have been missed. That would put the proportion of deaths in long-term care at around 45 per cent, much closer to the average of 40 per cent reported by peer countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The conclusion is based on a review of reports of excess deaths across Canada, the pattern of COVID-19 fatalities during the pandemic and cremation data showing a significant spike in deaths at homes versus hospitals in 2020. It also relies on antibody surveillance testing that collectively unmasked the likely broad scope of undetected COVID-19 infections.

The researchers adjusted the data to account for things like increased deaths due to the drug toxicity crisis and the expected drop in deaths linked to the pandemic because of things like reduced traffic accident rates.

The extent of “likely missed” fatalities varies by province and there are major data gaps in what was available, Moriarty said.

The knowledge gap is particularly acute in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba where cause-of-death data is only complete into February 2020, the report says. It was less of a problem in Quebec, where the virus accounted for all excess deaths, and Ontario.

Between Feb. 1 and Nov. 28, 2020, the study found COVID-19 deaths of about 6,000 people aged 45 and older appeared to have gone undetected, unreported or unattributed to the virus.

“This suggests that if Canada has continued to miss these fatalities at the same rate since last November, the pandemic mortality burden may be two times higher than reported,” the report says.

Eemaan Kaur Thind, a public health practitioner who looked at both detected and undetected COVID-19 deaths in racialized communities, said the results weren’t a shock given previous reports linking the communities and deaths or hospitalization rates.

The study suggests it’s likely many cases in those communities were never identified, and the resulting deaths were never counted.

“We know that a high-proportion of essential workers happen to be visible minorities,” she said.

“None of that surprised me, although it never really becomes any less hard to see the official numbers when you see something like this.”

Thind said she hopes the findings push policy-makers to listen to those most affected, many of whom raised alarms about things like the role language barriers played in access to COVID-19 testing and care.

“Data is very important but I think it’s more important to also listen to people and believe them.”

About 25 per cent of likely deaths occurred in people between 45 and 64, the study said.

The researchers make several recommendations, including mandating weekly preliminary reporting of deaths due to all causes to Statistics Canada, performing COVID-19 testing on all people who die in any setting, and immediately adopting methods used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for estimating excess mortality during the pandemic.

The group also calls for the creation of a national COVID-19 mortality task force with the provinces and territories, and independent advisers to investigate why so many Canadian COVID-19 cases and deaths have been missed or unreported, including examining demographic and employment data for those who died.

Source: COVID-19 deaths in Canada may be two times higher than reported: Study

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