In Indigenous Knowledge, Innovative Solutions

2021/07/12 Leave a comment

Some interesting examples:

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.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/opinion/indigenous-maori-new-zealand-environment.html

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USA: The Skill Level of Immigrants Is Rising | Cato at Liberty Blog

2021/07/12 Leave a comment

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.

Figure 3 shows that immigrants have higher high school dropout rates than natives, but immigrants who come here at a younger age (younger than 10) typically end up getting more education eventually.

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.

Source: The Skill Level of Immigrants Is Rising | Cato at Liberty Blog

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China slams Olympic boycott call, ‘politicization of sports’

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

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.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/china-slams-olympic-boycott-call-politicization-sports-78731310

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‘What are equity-seeking groups?’ Confidential report reveals Greens’ problems supporting diverse candidates in 2019

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Of note but probably the least of their worries right now:

Election 2015 and Beyond- Implementation Diversity and Inclusion (2019 update included).111

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.”

Source: ‘What are equity-seeking groups?’ Confidential report reveals Greens’ problems supporting diverse candidates in 2019

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EU votes for action over Hungary’s anti-LGBT law

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Good. Now if Ottawa could show more political courage with respect to Quebec’s breaches of the constitution and charter:

The European Parliament has voted in favour of urgent legal action over Hungary’s new law banning the depiction of homosexuality to under-18s.

The new legislation breached “EU values, principles and law”, MEPs said.

The parliament added that the law was “another intentional and premeditated example of the gradual dismantling of fundamental rights in Hungary”.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban insists school policy is a matter for Hungary, not “Brussels bureaucrats”.

In a resolution passed on Thursday with 459 in favour, 147 against and 58 abstentions, MEPs said the latest developments in Hungary followed a broader pattern of political censorship.

The parliament urged the European Commission to use a new tool that allows the EU to reduce budget allocations to member states in breach of the rule of law, to ensure that the Hungarian government reverse the decision.

It also urged legal action against Hungary’s right-wing nationalist government at the European Court of Justice.

Critics say Hungary’s new law, which came into force on Thursday, equates homosexuality with paedophilia.

“This legislation uses the protection of children as an excuse to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday, calling it “a disgrace”.

“Whatever they do, we will not allow [LGBT] activists into our children’s kindergartens and schools,” Prime Minister Orban responded.

What impact will the new law have?

The new rules introduced by Hungary focus on increasing punishment for convicted paedophiles, but an amendment was passed on 15 June banning the portrayal or promotion of homosexuality among under-18s.

While it could affect sex education and advertising, and even stop TV favourites such as Friends or Harry Potter being broadcast until late at night, there are also fears that vulnerable young people could be deprived of important support.

Teaching sex education in schools will be limited to people approved by the government.

It is not yet clear what the penalties for breaching the law will be.

What other rules has Hungary introduced?

Hungary has introduced a number of similar decisions since Prime Minister Orban took power in 2010.

In December 2020, parliament banned same-sex couples from adopting children.

Earlier the same year, the country passed a law preventing people from legally changing their gender.

Hungary also does not recognise gay marriage.

Mr Orban has been widely criticised in the EU, accused of curbing the rights of migrants and other minorities, politicising the courts and media, and tolerating anti-Semitism. He says he is defending Hungary’s Christian values in a Europe gripped by left-wing liberalism.

Source: EU votes for action over Hungary’s anti-LGBT law

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Palestinians start applying for citizenship under family unification laws

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Of note. Creating ‘facts on the ground’ while the law has not been renewed:
Palestinians who are married to Israeli citizens but who have not been able to obtain Israeli citizenship or residency due to the Citizenship Law which the government failed to renew this week have begun filing requests for such standing with the Interior Ministry.
NGOs, including the Hamoked civil rights group, have begun filing requests for citizenship and residency on behalf of their clients, and are encouraging others to do so as well.
There are some 9,200 Palestinians married to Israeli Arab citizens who have the most basic “stay permits” allowing them to reside in the country but which have to be renewed every one or two years, and another 3,500 who due to special circumstances were able to obtain temporary residency visas.
They will all now be able to apply for citizenship, although since the Arab population of east Jerusalem generally shuns citizenship in favor of residency those with stay permits in the city will likely request residency visas.
Until now, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law prevented Palestinians who marry Israeli Arab citizens from obtaining citizenship through naturalization, as is available to other foreign national spouses of Israelis.
The law was passed on security grounds and later extended to Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Iranians who marry Israelis.
But the law has been criticized by human rights groups as discriminatory and on humanitarian grounds, and was opposed by coalition partners Ra’am and Meretz.
Although compromises were found, two Ra’am MKs abstained, while Yamina rebel MK Amichai Shikli voted against, and the law was toppled.
This means that those Palestinians married to Israeli citizens can now start the application process with the Interior Ministry for citizenship or residency like any other foreign national.
They will be able to apply first for a B1 visa, then an A5 temporary residency visa, and ultimately for citizenship if they do not live in east Jerusalem.
Jessica Montell, Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, said that her organization represents approximately 400 families and that it has begun filing visa applications for them to the Interior Ministry.
In some families not just the spouse needs to obtain residency, the children do as well, she said.
Asked whether the ministry might hold up the processing of applications while the government ponders new steps, Montell insisted that the “Ministry doesn’t have right to drag its feet,” and that it had to “respect people’s rights.”
She said the standard response time for a request to a government authority is 45 days, and that if her clients did not receive responses in such time they would take the issue to court.
“The ministry cannot ignore these requests for a year in the hope a new law is passed,” said Montell.
“Israelis are just as safe as they were before the law expired. The authorities still have all the tools necessary to prevent dangerous people from entering the country, but without this law we will be a little bit more free and equal,” she said.
“Without this law, all Israeli citizens and residents have an equal right to fall in love and build a family, and that’s good news for these families and for everyone who cares about basic human rights.”
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked has said however that she intends to bring the law back to the Knesset for a vote in the coming weeks in a fresh attempt to get it approved, meaning that the gateway to citizenship for such people may soon be closed.
Shaked has emphasized the security basis of the law, stating this week that the majority of terror attacks carried out by Arab Israeli citizens have been committed either by individuals who obtained some form of status in Israel through family reunification under the Citizenship Law, or by their offspring.
The Shin Bet said in 2018 that since 2001 some 155 individuals involved in terror activities obtained entry to Israel under family reunification laws.
But the law has also been justified to preserve Israel’s Jewish majority, something emphasized this week by Shaked, as well as  more centrist figures like Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and, a few weeks ago, Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Source: Palestinians start applying for citizenship under family unification laws

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Ottawa plans to teach non-racialized Canadians about systemic racism in new campaign

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Not sure it will reach the people it needs to reach but we shall see:

The federal government plans to launch a national ad campaign aimed at making more white Canadians knowledgeable about systemic racism.

Launching a public education and awareness campaign is part of the Liberal government’s anti-racism strategy.

That strategy says $3.3 million will be spent on a marketing effort.

Details of what Canadian Heritage is looking for in such a campaign, set to launch later this year, are included in documents posted on the government’s procurement website.

The department says its target audience is “non-racialized Canadian middle-aged adults”  — defined as between 30 and 44 years old — living in any rural or urban area.

It specifically points out that includes adults living in places such as Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Quebec, considered to be “racism hot spots” because of the high volume of police-reported hate crimes.

According to the documents, the government wants its audience to be taught about “implicit bias,” and for the campaign to “weave together an emotionally compelling narrative of contemporary Canadian identity and values as antithetical to racism.”

The department says the overall goal is to get more Canadians fighting against systemic racism by making them aware of its impacts through marketing, social media, posters and public engagement.

It notes the campaign should also look at ways to “engage relevant influencers.”

“In this COVID-19 context, Canadians are face-to-face with a unique opportunity to reimagine the social contract … in ways that place anti-racism, equity, reconciliation and human rights at the heart of the recovery process,” the documents say.

The department cites how data shows that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Indigenous, Black, Asian, Muslim and Jewish communities faced more discrimination and hate crimes.

The issue of systemic racism was brought to the forefront in May 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

His death sparked protests and rallies across Canada calling out racism in this country too.

More recently, the country has been seized by the pain and legacy of the residential school system after First Nations, using ground-penetrating radar, started discovering hundreds of unmarked graves at former school sites where they say Indigenous children were buried.

Source: Ottawa plans to teach non-racialized Canadians about systemic racism in new campaign

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America’s White Christian Plurality Has Stopped Shrinking, A New Study Finds

2021/07/09 Leave a comment

Of interest. Looking forward to the Canadian 2021 census which includes a religious affiliation question:

Two dramatic trends that for years have defined the shifting landscape of religion in America — a shrinking white Christian majority, alongside the rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans — have stabilized, according to a new, massive survey of American religious practice.

What was once a supermajority of white Christians — more than 80% of Americans identified as such in 1976, and two-thirds in 1996 — has now plateaued at about 44%, according to the new survey, which was conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. That number first dipped below 50% in 2012.

They have largely been replaced by Americans who do not list any religious affiliation, a group that has tripled in proportion since the 1990s. Today, the unaffiliated make up roughly a quarter of Americans. Young adults are most likely to identify this way, with more than a third saying they are atheist, agnostic or otherwise secular, the study found.

“These things tend to be generational. And this really began with the millennial generation,” says Robert P. Jones, CEO and Founder of PRRI and author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.

White evangelicals began aligning politically with Republicans during the 1980s, meaning millennials were the first generation to grow up seeing the Christian right as the most public expression of religion, Jones says.

“And it was a partisan group, very conservative, and they had commitments, like anti-gay commitments, that really ran against the values of that generation,” Jones says.

The survey is called The 2020 Census of American Religion. It is not related to the official U.S. Census, which has not asked about religious affiliation since the 1950s, a policy that stems from concerns about the separation of church and state.

With that absence of large-scale Census-style data, researchers at PRRI set out to create an ambitious report on the state of religion in the U.S. Over the course of seven years, they conducted nearly 500,000 phone interviews, asking not just about religion, but also age, race and ethnicity, geography, and political preference.

“It really does help us understand some of the cultural engines that drive our politics and can really help us understand, I think, the divisions really that the country is facing today,” Jones says.

On the Republican side, the preferences of white evangelicals loom large, even as the overall number of white evangelicals in America continues to decline. Though they make up just 14% of Americans overall, they remain the largest single religious group among Republican voters with the power to sway party priorities — which this year have included anti-abortion bills and policies restricting healthcare and sports access for transgender people.

“If you look at [the white evangelical] presence in the national religious landscape, it’s actually quite diminished from what it was even 10 years ago,” says Jones. “I think it’s still surprising to many Americans because of how visible this population has been, particularly during the Trump administration.”

By contrast, Democrats are a more religiously diverse group, with significant numbers of religiously unaffiliated people and non-white Christians — including Black Protestants, Latino Protestants, and Latino Catholics — along with more Jews, Muslims, and other minority religions. White Catholics, like President Joe Biden, comprise just 13% of Democrats.

The survey also marks the most ambitious geographic mapping of religious practices in decades, its authors say, in large part because the U.S. Census has not collected wide-scale religious affiliation data since the 1950s.

The findings show that historical forces — like slavery in the South, the Civil War dividing white Protestants, and 19th century immigration patterns — continue to shape the geography of American religion, Jones says.

The country’s most religiously diverse counties are in major coastal metropolitan areas, along with Arizona’s Navajo County, which encompasses several Native American reservations, and Maui County in Hawaii. Of the ten least diverse counties with at least 10,000 people, eight are in Mississippi.

Source: America’s White Christian Plurality Has Stopped Shrinking, A New Study Finds

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Mesley: I made mistakes. But my departure wasn’t the solution to the CBC’s problem with racism

2021/07/09 Leave a comment

Context matters, as was the case of the UofOttawa professor (University of Ottawa professor at centre of controversy …https://www.theglobeandmail.com › canada › article-un…):

For almost 40 years, my name had a prefix: I was “the CBC’s Wendy Mesley.” And all that time I never wanted to be seen as an enemy of change. I’ve always tried to give voice to those who aren’t being heard; I’ve fought against the status quo my whole life. It’s why I got into journalism.

When I started out, there were few women in senior journalism roles. I was the first woman to cover the prime minister in CBC TV’s parliamentary bureau. Other women soon joined me. We fought for changes in coverage, and it happened because we saw things differently than men. It was the age of second-wave feminism, and we were told we could do anything. But women (and men) of colour did not receive the same openings, which meant many of their stories weren’t told and many of their insights weren’t considered. Today, change is happening, and I think much of it is good.

None of that matters now. I hurt people I never meant to. After a scandal last year, my prefix is now gone, the split with the CBC is official, and I have retired. The company gets a rebrand, and I go away.

But first, I’d like to do something I wish I’d been able to do long ago: Tell my side of the story, and finally talk about the two worst mistakes I made in my long and generally happy career.

After George Floyd’s murder last May, a Black CBC reporter tweeted that she had repeatedly been called the N-word. I was furious. I wanted to put her on the air to discuss that, and said so in a conference call with producers for The Weekly with Wendy Mesley.

During our discussion, I was so upset over what our colleague experienced that I stupidly filled in the N-word. Why? I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times, and I have no good answer. I was mad that she faced this kind of abuse. I can be very blunt. And I didn’t understand how any use of that word could hurt, regardless of its context. It was thoughtless and wrong.

One of the producers of the show was Black; another was of Asian descent. They went silent on the call. I was horrified I had hurt them and apologized, but the damage was done. I was told that bosses would be informed, and that there would be an investigation.

That would unearth an incident from months before while preparing another show on racism focusing on Quebec’s controversial Bill 21, which banned head coverings. After reflecting on the years I spent as a reporter in Montreal and Quebec City, I tried to make the point in an editorial meeting that many francophone Quebeckers feel like an endangered minority within Canada, and that they are victims of prejudice. I argued that this left less room for them to understand others, particularly people who weren’t like them. To make my point, I referenced the seminal 1968 book Nègres blancs d’Amérique, a Marxist analysis by the Francophone writer Pierre Vallières.

Again, I filled in the blank by saying the English title. To be honest, it didn’t occur to me to say “White N-words of America,” which is how the title appears in the translated English publication, except with the second word in the title fully explicit and uncensored.

All of this was leaked to the press. A storyteller became the story – even worse, I became a scandal.

The CBC suspended me. At one point, I thought I was going to be fired. Instead, I was punished and also ordered to take sensitivity training. The details of the investigation, I was told, were to be kept confidential. Eventually, I would be allowed to make a statement that would be vetted by my employers. It was made clear to me that the CBC would look after the story – and me.

Trusting them was my second big mistake.

The CBC did not offer me any public support. And I did not defend myself because I just wanted to return to work. In the midst of last year’s racial reckoning, I also felt it would have been wrong for me to play the victim card.

But my silence backfired as players on all sides used me as a cudgel to advance political interests. While some journalists offered public support, my most vocal defenders were free-speech warriors who wanted to make me a cautionary tale about the dangers of cancel culture. That distinction horrified me, because I’ve fought to cancel injustice my whole life. I resented being made a poster child of a movement I wasn’t part of.

I also believed my punishment would be proportionate, because people would come to understand there’s a difference between a reporter repeating a hateful remark with colleagues while in pursuit of a story, and a gleeful racist trying to draw blood.

I was wrong about that too.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and narratives can be filled in on blank slates. People assumed I’d been let go or retired in shame, and that because I had disappeared and not defended myself, the situation must have been even worse than it was.

And I believe the CBC had an agenda too: using me to distract or absolve themselves from their own underlying problems. A month after the murder of Mr. Floyd, as protests by Black Lives Matter activists swept across Canada, almost 500 current and former employees sent a letter to management “urging them to take action to dismantle systemic racism in the corporation.”

“The journalistic failures in the CBC’s coverage of this historic moment are the direct result of whose voices and experiences drive decision-making at the CBC,” the letter read. “The problem lies with white editors who dismiss pitches from non-white journalists as ‘biased’ or ‘unimportant’ because they might not appeal to a white audience.”

When the CBC’s licence came up for renewal at the CRTC that June, president Catherine Tait told the hearings: “We recognize that systemic racism exists in Canada and within many of its institutions, including its national public broadcaster. We are committed to combatting racism in all its forms.”

But I soon learned there had been at least three other cases at the network involving shows in which the N-word was allegedly used in meetings. While one was reported, the other cases seem to have disappeared internally – the broader questions of systemic racism swept under the rug – until I became a convenient device for cleaning up their brand. Even the corporation’s own ombudsperson concluded that it was “disappointing” that the network’s ensuing coverage of my actions “did not offer a wider variety of perspectives.”

After the cancellation of my show, I was offered another role that I saw as unreasonable. I asked whether we could find a mutually agreeable departure and was told that any such arrangement would require that I not discuss events of the last year. As a journalist who put a lot of people on the spot, and who hated being told “no comment,” that was never gonna happen.

I remain angry. I’m angry at myself for hurting people. I’m angry at the CBC for abandoning me because of two moments, instead of judging me by my whole career. I understand the mistake I made was serious and invited repercussions, but I also submit that using a particular situation to advance broader agendas is divisive and wrong.

I know it’s easier to say this as a white person, but I have long argued for journalistic objectivity, which is seen by some, reasonably, as reinforcing the status quo. But it doesn’t have to. Journalism should just be a search for the truth – all truths.

In 2005, when I had cancer, I saw a story I thought needed telling. I did a documentary about how I thought “big pharma” and cancer agencies weren’t doing enough to stop the spread of the disease. You could argue I was opinionated and not objective. I faced some criticism, but I was never accused of bias by my bosses. I think we need to listen to the accounts of Black and Indigenous journalists and other journalists of colour when they report being accused of bias for challenging the status quo.

I’m sad about how this has all played out. It’s certainly not how I’d hoped to bring down the curtain on my CBC career. But after a year of reflection and a whole range of emotions, I’m left feeling mostly disappointed, because this could have been handled so differently. It could have been a more productive process, in which the CBC used the moment to help foster greater dialogue about a difficult topic. Instead, it was all about blame, shame and regret. Had things gone differently, maybe my last story at the CBC could have been as meaningful as all the stories I’d told in the past 38 years.

Source: I made mistakes. But my departure wasn’t the solution to the CBC’s problem with racism

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Bill S-230: It’s Time to Restore Citizenship to “Lost” Canadians. Limited numbers although rhetoric continues

2021/07/09 Leave a comment

This issue continues to attract more political support than is warranted given that the major issues were dealt with in citizenship legislation in 2009 and 2014.

The Bill concerns a small cohort of second-generation Canadians born inside a 50-month window, from February 15, 1977, through April 16, 1981, so those who had already turned 28 when that age 28 rule was repealed through Bill C-37. 

Despite all the earlier and current rhetoric regarding the large numbers affected, IRCC officials advised SOCI of the numbers:

  • Following the 2009 changes, about 17,500 applied and were granted citizenship;
  • Following the 2015 changes, about 600 applied and were granted citizenship;
  • Since 2014, there were 109 persons who applied for a discretionary grant to address particular hardship situations. 105 have been granted with four still under review;
  • Estimates of remaining cases are in the order of a few hundred.

Substantively, given the small number remaining in the window, discretionary grants are the appropriate response. What is clear from the numbers, is that the actual number of “Lost Canadians” who wish to claim Canadian citizenship is small, contrary to earlier and current claims.

It is unclear why Senators wish to pursue this when there are many more substantive citizenship issues that warrant attention.

The contrast between these small numbers and the inflammatory, often fact-free and exaggerated rhetoric of long-term advocate Don Chapman in his opening statement and subsequent comments is striking. Opening statement below gives the flavour (highlights some of the more egregious assertions):

Don Chapman, Head, Lost Canadians: Thank you, honourable senators. I’m honoured to be in the presence of all of you. I admire your social and moral engagement in serving Canada to make it a better and more inclusive country. We’re on common ground.

Bill S-230 is a continuation of recommendations the Senate made 13 years ago.

Senators, Lost Canadians is the Canadian version of the British Windrush scandal, except ours is mostly off the radar, far larger, affects way more people and is one of the biggest scandals in Canada’s history. Now, that probably sounds presumptuous, especially after the horrific discovery of the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children. To explain why I make the comparison, those children, including all Indigenous people, are part of the Lost Canadian narrative. There are at least 15 categories of Lost Canadians, and Indigenous and First Nations are just one. But their story is our story and our story is their story. It’s about a country that has and continues to turn against its own people. Since Confederation, Canada has not always embraced Brown or Jewish people or other subgroups. Canadian history was written to conveniently include a colossal fabrication, which has produced heinous results. To know the truth, you must understand the history of citizenship.

Senators, you and the MPs are the guardians and caretakers of our collective identity called citizenship. You’re our parents, we’re your children and the family’s dysfunctional. Picture a neighbour befriending kids from all around but then secretly abusing their own children. That’s how it is for Lost Canadians. Canada welcomes people from around the world, but not us, your own children. To be clear, we’re pro-immigration; Canada needs people. But why are long-standing Canadian families rejected while immigrants are welcome? Why can’t there be room for everyone?

In 2003, in my first House of Commons Citizenship and Immigration Committee testimony, I described myself as a Canadian in exile. Years later and after numerous rejections, I actually considered declaring refugee status in my own country, and I wasn’t the only Lost Canadian so desperate. Regrettably, this horror show is ongoing. It’s about identity, belonging and culture.

Indigenous Canadians are proud of who they are. I’m proud of who they are and admire their perseverance in standing up for what is right. Canada wrongly tried to strip them of their identity, with deadly consequences. Be forewarned: They are not the only category of Lost Canadians who died due to the neglect.

Now think of citizenship as being a member of a family. It’s the fibre of your being. How would you feel if your parents booted you out? Picture a six-year-old, born in Canada and extremely proud of being Canadian. Psychologically, how is that child affected when they discover that their own country or family doesn’t want them anymore? That child was me. How deplorable that this is still happening to other children, with the obvious devastating results. Their hurt lasts a lifetime.

Now flip the coin. How does it feel being the Canadian parent of a minor child being rejected? I know this too because, as an adult, after 47 years, Canada finally said I could go home with citizenship, but on condition I leave behind my minor-aged daughters. Today, some Canadian citizen parents are in the same boat, forced to explain to their kids why Canada doesn’t want them.

Lost Canadians is not about immigration. It’s about citizenship and rights. Please make the distinction.

Also, senators and MPs are appointed or elected to represent Canadian citizens. The problem is you don’t really know who is or is not a citizen, yet citizens are your constituents. So who exactly do you represent? The legislation remains a Rubik’s cube of confusion. Maybe it’s you, a family member, a grandchild or someone you know that’s a Lost Canadian. Roméo Dallaire lost his citizenship, as have other parliamentarians.

Question: If you’ve been aware of ongoing Lost Canadian abuses, why were you silent? Personally, I don’t think you were fully aware, but it wasn’t for my lack of trying to tell you. Going forward, no excuses, you now know. As for citizenship, Canada, the country you represent, is violating three United Nations human rights conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it’s already broken promises made on gender equality at the recent G7 summit. Maybe that’s because citizenship is not and has not been Canada’s priority. Take the name, IRCC. Immigration and refugees come before citizenship, the latter being the bastard child. For Lost Canadians, Canada’s outcasts, that’s exactly how it feels.

Bill S-230 is a much-needed fix. Thank you to my good friend Senator Martin and to Senator Omidvar. But for importance, the age 28 rule is third in priority of the five remaining Lost Canadian deficiencies. For the complete fix, Bill S-230 would need amendments that I’ve included, and the fixes are relatively simple. But absent that, tiered citizenship and unequal rights remain. Are you okay with that? It’s certainly against the Charter. That said, if amendments would delay the passage of this bill, then please pass it as is. Just don’t ignore other desperate Lost Canadians still in limbo, like children. As an airline pilot, I’d never ditch in the Hudson River and knowingly leave people behind. As overseers and protectors of Canadians and their identity and citizenship, please don’t you leave anyone behind either.

With urgency, put forward another Lost Canadians bill so that women have equal rights; that all Canadians are able to prove their substantial connection; that naturalized Canadians don’t have more rights than other Canadian citizens. Make it so that every naturalized Canadian, not just 99% of them, be deemed to have been born in Canada so that they too can confer citizenship to their children. Canada’s war dead must be recognized as having been the Canadian citizens they were.

After that, together, let’s work on introducing a mint-fresh, inclusive and Charter-compliant Citizenship Act. That’s what this committee recommended 13 years ago in your report on Lost Canadians, and then you promptly forgot about it, just like Canada did with the age 28 rule.

Now there are MPs and Canadians who believe the Senate is irrelevant. They’re wrong. For me and the hundreds of thousands of other Lost Canadians, we regained or qualified for citizenship because of wonderful and compassionate senators like yourselves, from all sides of the aisle. You were our saviours as Bill S-2 was our first parliamentary victory, and it was unanimous. Now let’s do it again, in the Senate today, with Bill S-230. Make it the first bill to correct these egregious wrongs, and then introduce a brand new, Charter-compliant national identity, making Canada the beacon of light to the world for its vision, its inclusiveness, its values and for its positive actions on human rights and equality.

Honourable senators, citizenship could be one of your greatest legacies. I look forward to working with you, and thank you.

Source: https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/Committee/432/SOCI/55289-e

And the earlier statement in the Senate by Senator Omidvar

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-230, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), introduced by our colleague Senator Martin.

Before I comment on this bill, I would like to mark June 1 as a transformational day in the Senate. We have passed Bill S-4. We have held on to tradition where we have needed to, but we have also gone with confidence into the future. I want to thank our colleague, Senator Marc Gold, for his dedication to bringing this to our chamber.

I am the official critic for Bill S-230. I always think of a critic as someone who has something to object to. In truth, there is very little to object to in this bill, so I stand very much as a supporter of this long overdue piece of legislation.

When I became a senator in 2016, I started to get emails from Canadians who knew of my interest in citizenship. I heard the term Lost Canadians for the first time. I have to be honest, I was, frankly, lost when I heard that terminology because those of us who have found Canada know what a privilege it is to be Canadian. To have inadvertently lost your citizenship — because of what I can best describe as bureaucratic missteps and fumbling and lost opportunities — is unimaginable to me.

In June 2016, I rose in the chamber as the sponsor of the citizenship bill, Bill C-6, and I drew a picture of Canada and its citizenship as a house with a strong roof, a strong door, a lot of windows to let the sunshine in, but also to keep danger out. I believe that metaphor still stands today, but the foundations of this house are grounded in a few principles.

First and most important is equality amongst citizens. Equality sees all Canadians — by birth or naturalization, mono-citizens or dual citizens, whether citizens of 50 years, 10 years or 1 month — treated equally under the law. Equal rights, equal responsibility and, when necessary, equal punishment. These are not aspirational goals. This is the floor; the absolute foundation of how equality is expressed in Canada.

Second is the principle of facilitating citizenship, making it accessible for those who qualify. I think of this again as the main family room of the house: a big fire blazing to keep out the wretched cold and a big, welcoming door. However, for a few Canadians, the fire has lost its warmth, and they were inadvertently expelled, banished, so to say, from this house.

Many have lived in Canada for years, as Senator Martin has pointed out, without even realizing they may not have Canadian citizenship any longer. Although legislative fixes have tried to bring citizenship back in different ways, it has never captured everyone. This is a true example of the unintended, negative impact of legislation that we deal with in so many different ways.

When I rose to speak on Bill C-6, which was an omnibus citizenship act, former senator Willie Moore, who was with us, asked me whether or not Lost Canadians would be brought back into the fold. Sadly, I had to say to him, no, that was out of the scope of the bill.

After Bill C-6 was passed, former Senator Eggleton took it on and was almost ready to table the bill when his resignation date approached. Again, the bill was left orphaned, in a way. Since that time, Don Chapman and others have been talking to Senator Martin, Senator Jaffer and all of us to try to bring this back to our attention. I am incredibly grateful to Senator Martin for taking this bull by the horns and bringing our attention to it.

As we know, and as Senator Martin has explained, our immigration system is incredibly complex. Immigration law is complex. Within immigration law, there is citizenship law that is incredibly complex. It sometimes catches people in a net from which it is hard to escape.

As Senator Martin has explained, it’s a narrow bill. In 1977, the government introduced a new Citizenship Act. Under that act, children born abroad on or after February 14, 1977, received their Canadian citizenship if one of their parents was a Canadian citizen, regardless of their marital status.

However, if that Canadian parent was born outside Canada and, therefore, the child was what we would call second generation, the child had to apply for citizenship by the age of 28. If they did not put an application by age 28, their citizenship was taken away from them, often without them ever realizing it.

Later, in April 2009 — many years later, still trying to catch up on the problem — Bill C-37 changed the Citizenship Act again and repealed the age 28 rule. However, the bill didn’t completely deal with Canadians who were born abroad between that narrow window of 1977 and 1981, and who turned 28 before Bill C-37 became the law. Some of these individuals were well informed enough and applied for their citizenship. Others simply fell in between the cracks.

Senator Dalphond asked the question, how many are these? I’m also curious. My information is that there are definitely not thousands. There may even be just a few hundred. But I hope we all recognize, even for just a few hundred, how important it is to be able to be franchised as Canadians.

Many who were born overseas but raised in Canada had an entrenched life in Canada. They went to school here; they have jobs and families here. Their roots are firmly here. They have paid income taxes. But they were unaware of the issue — just as I’m often unaware of when my driver’s licence expires, and then I have to really struggle to regain it — which certainly happens to people. We are talking, as I said, about a few hundred people, at most.

The government relies, as Senator Martin has stated, on ministerial appointments. Every time I’ve spoken to every successive immigration minister, they have said, “It’s not a problem. I can deal with it. Send me the file.” But, colleagues, that is not a systemic way of dealing with an injustice of this kind. We need a law. Even though Byrdie Funk — someone whom I admire a great deal — and Anneliese Demos — the same — even though they had the agency, the voice, the capacity to advocate for themselves, I worry about those who do not, who cannot get the minister’s attention or that of his department. I think it is time for us to fix this in a systemic manner.

There are severe consequences for having to wait to get formal recognition back. While waiting to get your citizenship, you can’t have a social insurance number. You may not be able to get a job. You may not be able to travel. Likely you’re not able to travel because you don’t have a passport. You have limited access to health care. All this at the same time when there is always the threat of deportation hanging over you.

In the case of Byrdie Funk, it is not clear whether all her years of contribution to the Canada Pension Plan will be honoured when she gets her pension.

Bill S-230 will allow citizens who were born abroad and have built a life here to prove that they are Canadian and that they have the right to pass citizenship onto their children. It will not lead to a perpetual passage of Canadian citizenship to generations who may never live in Canada. This does nothing for third-generation Canadians.

Honourable senators, I urge you, in short, to support this bill and send it to committee for further study. Lost Canadians have already waited too long. Let’s bring them back into the Canadian fold sooner than rather later. Thank you.

Source: https://www.ratnaomidvar.ca/speech-on-bill-s230-its-time-to-restore-citizenship-to-lost-canadians-2/


Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

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