Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2020/11/12 Leave a comment
2020/11/11 Leave a comment
Risk to Chinese Canadians of note:
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says Beijing routinely uses undercover state security officials and “trusted agents,” or proxies, to target members of Canada’s Chinese community in an effort to silence critics of President Xi Jinping, including threats of retribution against their families back in China.
The federal spy agency says these illegal activities in Canada are part of a global campaign of intimidation that constitutes a threat to this country’s sovereignty and the safety of Canadians. One of the most high-profile efforts is Operation Fox Hunt, directed by Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, which has been under way since 2014.
Operation Fox Hunt was ostensibly launched as an anti-corruption campaign by Mr. Xi that targeted wealthy citizens and corrupt Communist Party members, who had fled overseas with large amounts.
However, FBI director Christopher Wray said in July that Operation Fox Hunt’s principal aim now is to suppress dissent among the Chinese diaspora. He called Fox Hunt nothing more than a sweeping bid by Mr. Xi to “target Chinese nationals who he sees as threats and who live outside China, around the world.”
On Oct. 28, the FBI charged eight individuals, including three Chinese citizens, with conspiring to act as “illegal agents of the People’s Republic of China” as part of Operation Fox Hunt. The charges stem from a foiled plot beginning in 2016 to coerce an American resident and Chinese citizen identified only as John Doe to return to China with his family – by threatening his wife and daughter in the United States and other relatives still in China, the U.S. government said.
Now Canada’s spy agency is speaking out on the same issue, publicly acknowledging to The Globe and Mail that China is using threats and intimidation against members of Canada’s Chinese community that are akin to the tactics used in Operation Fox Hunt.
While China may be trying to coerce some fugitive criminals to return home, CSIS said, “these tactics can also be used as cover for silencing dissent, pressuring political opponents and instilling a general fear of state power no matter where a person is located.”
John Townsend, the Canadian spy agency’s head of media relations, was speaking in reply to a question from The Globe about whether CSIS had the same national security concerns about Operation Fox Hunt as Mr. Wray.
“Certain foreign states routinely attempt to threaten and intimidate individuals around the world through various state entities and non-state proxies. These states, such as the People’s Republic of China, may use a combination of their intelligence and security services as well as trusted agents to assist them in conducting various forms of threat activities,” the CSIS spokesman said.
He urged Chinese nationals and Chinese-Canadians to report any threats or intimidation to Canadian authorities.
“Importantly, when foreign states target members of Canadian communities, these individuals, for various reasons, may not have the means to protect themselves or do not know they can report these activities to Canadian authorities. The fear of state-backed or state-linked retribution targeting both them and their loved ones, in Canada and abroad, can force individuals to submit to foreign interference,” Mr. Townsend said.
“When individuals in Canada are subjected to such harassment, manipulation or intimidation by foreign states seeking to gather support for or mute criticism of their policies, these activities constitute a threat to Canada’s sovereignty and to the safety of Canadians,” he added.
Mr. Townsend declined to say how many members of the Chinese community in Canada have been targeted by Fox Hunt. The FBI’s Mr. Wray said hundreds of U.S. residents have been pursued by agents of China.
In a separate statement, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they are aware of China’s operations in Canada, adding “at this time, the RCMP has not laid any charges” of foreign-influenced threats covered by the Security of Information Act. Canada Border Service Agency was unable to say how many Chinese citizens had been removed from Canada because it was determined they were in this country to put pressure on or coerce people.
Former CSIS director Richard Fadden, who also served as national security adviser to prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, said it is noteworthy that CSIS is publicly acknowledging what has been a significant national security concern for many years.
“The Chinese authorities are very active. They are very sophisticated. They have almost unlimited resources and in particular, the Chinese diaspora in Canada is quite large,” he said.
Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said this intimidation from China on Canadian soil has become “standard operating procedure” now.
He said sisters and brothers are often used to exert pressure on behalf of Beijing. “In British Columbia, siblings are fair targets and they’re not even shy about it. It’s literally in your face.”
“The proxy from China will have a face-to-face conversation … to explain either subtly or not subtly what they expect in terms of the family member’s behaviour in Canada and next steps that will be taken if people don’t co-operate.”
Mr. Kurland said the Chinese state has grown “less reluctant to do this kind of dirty work on Canadian soil to members of the Chinese Canadian community.” Such direct pressure would be virtually unheard of 15 to 20 years ago, he said.
“It’s one thing to receive a telephone or message indirectly. It’s something quite different when you get a knock on the door from a proxy from China right here in Canada.”
A former CSIS official said Chinese government officials have made a habit of booking meetings in Canada with government ministries but arranging these appointments so that there were days or weeks between the meetings. That left the visitors time to pay visits to Chinese citizens living in Canada and intimidate them. The Globe is not identifying the former official because he is not authorized to discuss these matters publicly.
He also pointed to incidents in 2018 where an unidentified individual took out full-page ads in Ming Pao Daily, a Chinese language newspaper with Hong Kong owners, that accused a Chinese citizen living in Canada of being a fugitive from justice in China. The ads listed his birthdate, Chinese passport number, Chinese citizen identification number and alleged he was a Communist Party official guilty of embezzlement and taking bribes. It implored the individual to “give themselves up” and admit their guilt. The sponsor of the ads was not identified in the ads.
Toronto refugee and immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman told The Globe that some of his clients in Canada have received cellphone messages from Chinese security officials threatening them and their families if they don’t return home.
Mr. Waldman said he has has worked several cases where Chinese citizens in Canada were the target of intimidation to force them or their relatives to return to China.
“This is a very serious problem,” Mr. Waldman said.
In some cases, Chinese authorities have dispatched people to Canada to try to put pressure on people to return, he said. In other cases, his clients’ relatives in China were detained to force them to come back.
Mr. Fadden said Chinese Fox Hunt agents come to Canada either under diplomatic cover or covertly on tourist visas, as business people and students to bully expatriates, including some suspected of corruption, to return home.
“They try to do it in such a way where it is not obvious,” he said.
Mr. Fadden said it can be difficult to lay criminal charges in these cases, but CSIS and the RCMP are able to stop the intimidation tactics if people come forward to complain.
“Either CSIS or the RCMP can make a point of making it very clear that we are onto to them and they better stop. I would guess in most cases they would stop and go away,” he said. “It’s difficult to get a grip on unless the people who are being approached, harassed, intimidated complain and very few do.”
In a heavily redacted report issued in March, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians said the RCMP had co-operated with China’s Fox Hunt, facilitating their requests for police and prosecutors to travel to Canada to interview alleged fugitives. However, the committee said the “RCMP imposed increasingly stringent criteria on PRC investigators as time passed.”
Source: CSIS warns China’s Operation Fox Hunt is targeting Canada’s Chinese community
2020/11/11 Leave a comment
Sigh:
Quebec’s immigration minister Nadine Girault pulled out of a virtual meeting among provinces about human rights, drawing criticism from federal government officials who say it is because of the province’s refusal to acknowledge systemic racism.
Girault sent a bureaucrat to observe, instead of participate in the meeting, citing scheduling issues. Alberta and Saskatchewan also sent observers, rather than participating.
But Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault says he was told by Quebec provincial officials Girault’s absence was because of the meeting’s portion on systemic racism, which Premier François Legault has refused to say exists in Quebec.
“I deplore the Quebec government for not wanting to have a conversation with the federal government, the provinces and the territories, the national Indigenous organizations and representatives of civil society, on the issue of systemic racism,” Guilbeault tweeted.
A spokesperson for Girault, Flore Bouchon, said Quebec had been active in the preparations for the meeting, and that it decided to send an observer instead of the minister as soon as it received the official invitation.
“Quebec acts autonomously on its territory and internationally, particularly in the defence of human rights,” Bouchon wrote in an emailed statement.
Guilbeault, who is the Liberal MP for the Laurier—Sainte-Marie riding in Montreal, says he was told by colleagues in the Quebec government Legault saw the meeting as a way for the federal government to shape provincial policy.
“There is no question of a policy, of a national standard. We’re having a conversation about systemic racism,” Guilbeault told Radio-Caanada.
“It’s an exchange of best practices, to see how we can work together.”
The summit was partly organized by Heritage Canada and is focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on human rights, particularly on marginalized and vulnerable groups, as well as on issues of systemic racism, discrimination and inclusion.
Quebec’s decision not to participate is disappointing to Marisa Berry Méndez of Amnesty International, too.
“It’s a symbolic gesture to send somebody, but if they aren’t actively participating and making commitments on behalf of the province, then it’s not going far enough,” Méndez said.
Source: Quebec immigration minister skips federal human rights meeting addressing systemic racism
2020/11/10 Leave a comment
Of note:
The pandemic is threatening the pipeline of emerging female leaders and risks thwarting the progress Corporate Canada has made in diversity and inclusion efforts, the head of the country’s largest pension fund is warning.
The pace of change, particularly in diversifying executive teams, was already slow, said Mark Machin, president and chief executive officer of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, “you see some particularly alarming trends. … It could leave a permanent scarring and a setback for a lot of the progress that’s been made in the past,” he said.
The pandemic pushed women’s participation in the labour force down to a three-decade low, he noted; though there’s been a partial recovery in recent months, he cited recent surveys showing women are experiencing severe stress and burnout during the pandemic, with many considering quitting or reducing hours.
“It is fragile,” he said of the current situation, ahead of a gender diversity white paper that CPPIB will publish on Monday.
Female directors now account for 30 per cent of the board seats at TSX 60 index-listed companies – and just 15 per cent of the C-suite for the same group of companies, it noted.
To address that dearth, companies should set measurable targets for diversity on both boards and executive positions, Mr. Machin said. “I am a huge believer in targets. As business people, once we know what the target is, then we’ll solve for it.”
Few companies in Canada, however, have publicly stated targets: 29 per cent of companies say they have targets for women on boards, while just 7 per cent have targets for female executive officers, according to a report last month by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.
With so few companies setting diversity targets, some say the federal government may have to step in. Last week, Senator Howard Wetston, the former chair of the Ontario Securities Commission, said Ottawa may have to require corporate boards to set targets if the provinces fail to do so. “We haven’t gone far enough and we need to do better,” he said.
Boosting diversity in leadership is also crucial to Canada’s economic recovery, Mr. Machin said, citing studies showing that businesses with diverse work forces came through the previous recession in better shape.
As long-term investors, “it’s something that matters for us,” he said. “If you have companies that have diverse senior managements and diverse boards, they’re more likely to produce better risk-adjusted returns, because they make better decisions over time. It’s not just a belief – we’ve done that analysis multiple different ways.”
CPPIB, which has a $434-billion portfolio, has stepped up efforts to improve board diversity. In 2017, it started voting against the election of the nominating committee chair if the board had zero female directors. Last year, it voted against 13 Canadian public companies with no women on the board, and another 26 companies with only one female director.
This year, it voted against directors at 10 public companies (nine of which on the S&P/TSX Composite Index had only one woman on the board; the other, not listed on the benchmark index, was a company with none). Globally, it voted against 323 companies for failing to have any women on their boards.
“Watch this space,” Mr. Machin said, when asked if the fund is going to further ramp up pressure in the coming year.
The white paper issued several recommendations to accelerate the participation of women at all corporate levels, among them, giving workers more control over their schedules and removing bias by, for example, running job descriptions through software programs to eliminate terms that may appeal more to men.
It also urged more support for child care. Furloughs and reduced hours “may turn into permanent departures if parents who lack child care are forced to put their professional ambitions on hold,” it cautioned. Businesses can address this by creating more on-site daycares, helping employees source child care and accommodating workers who can’t return to the office because their children remain at home, the report said.
The CPPIB is not the only institution urging a greater priority on child care. Bank of Nova Scotia CEO Brian Porter called on the federal government in September to “significantly” enhance supports for parents with kids in daycare, to enable more women to enter the work force. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce also recently called for child-care reforms to improve affordability and accessibility, saying the COVID-19 crisis is having a “disproportionate” economic impact on women.
In an accompanying opinion piece submitted to The Globe, Mr. Machin noted the looming challenges in the coming months, with the economy projected to shrink by 6 per cent. “We expect a recession more than twice as deep as the one following the global financial crisis in 2008,” he said. “Let’s not hobble ourselves by denying our companies the talents and wisdom of half the population.”
2020/11/10 Leave a comment
Of note, the growth of immigration to non-traditional cities and states:
To grasp the impact of the latest great wave of immigration to the United States, consider the city of Grand Island, Neb.: More than 60 percent of public school students are nonwhite, and their families collectively speak 55 languages. During drop-off at Starr Elementary on a recent morning, parents bid their children goodbye in Spanish, Somali and Vietnamese.
“You wouldn’t expect to see so many languages spoken in a school district of 10,000,” said Tawana Grover, the school superintendent who arrived from Dallas four years ago. “When you hear Nebraska, you don’t think diversity. We’ve got the world right here in rural America.”
The students are the children of foreign-born workers who flocked to this town of 51,000 in the 1990s and 2000s to toil in the area’s meatpacking plants, where speaking English was less necessary than a willingness to do the grueling work.
They came to Nebraska from every corner of the globe: Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans who floated across the Rio Grande on inner tubes, in search of a better life; refugees who fled famine in South Sudan and war in Iraq to find safe haven; Salvadorans and Cambodians who spent years scratching for work in California and heard that jobs in Nebraska were plentiful and the cost of living low.
The story of how millions of immigrants since the 1970s have put down lasting rootsacross the country is by now well-known. What is less understood about President Trump’s four-year-long push to shut the borders and put “America First” is that his quest may prove ultimately a futile one. Even with one of the most severe declines in immigration since the 1920s, the country is on an irreversible course to becoming ever more diverse, and more dependent on immigrants and their children.
The president since the moment he took office issued a torrent of orders that reduced refugee admissions; narrowed who is eligible for asylum; made it more difficult to qualify for permanent residency or citizenship; tightened scrutiny of applicants for high-skilled worker visas and sought to limit the length of stay for international students. His policies slashed the number of migrants arrested and then released into the country from nearly 500,000 in fiscal 2019 to 15,000 in fiscal 2020.
The measures worked: “We are going to end the decade with lower immigration than in any decade since the ’70s,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who analyzed newly available census data.
The president-elect, Joseph R. Biden Jr. has pledged to reverse many of the measures. He has vowed to reinstate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, an Obama-era program that allowed young adults mainly brought to the United States illegally as children to remain, and to resume accepting refugees and asylum seekers in larger numbers.
He has also said he would introduce legislation to offer a path to citizenship for people in the country illegally.
2020/11/10 1 Comment
A range of possible measures, some which focus on political culture, others require institutional change, and some more realistic than others. But a good list to discuss and debate (respectfully of course!):
While the CNN hosts expressed shock and disgust, other networks turned their cameras away and Late Show host Stephen Colbert choked back tears, I felt a deep satisfaction when U.S. President Donald Trump spoke directly to the American people (and the world) on Thursday night and launched a scorched-earth attack on his own country’s democratic process — declaring it corrupt and fraudulent because it was failing to recognize his unmatched greatness and divine claim to renewed power.
Had Trump shown an ounce of decency or graciousness in that moment, there might have been an inclination among his Republican allies, certain political observers and even some historians to frame their final judgment of the worst president in U.S. history more forgivingly.
Instead, no one should be able summarize the term in office of the 45th U.S. president as anything but a nightmare, its end — or at least the beginning of its end — suitably incoherent, desperate and terrifying.
But the Trump horror show of the past four years isn’t something Canadians should too swiftly forget. There are many lessons to be learned from what our neighbours to the south have been enduring since 2016 — though this country and the entire world has suffered along with them.
The following is a shortlist of 10 things we Canadians need to be thinking about in charting our own political future in a way that should prevent Trumpism from ever triumphing here.
• We need greater vigilance in calling out and condemning dog-whistling bigotry — not to mention undisguised bigotry — and other strategically divisive speech and actions among fringe political forces and mainstream actors alike;
• We need to demand basic decency in our political discourse and punish corrosive, hyper-partisan rhetoric in which legitimate opponents and other important players in public affairs (such as journalists) are characterized as enemies;
• We must establish a fully trusted electoral system in which the efficiency, transparency, fairness and integrity of the voting process is guaranteed with adequate funding and the best technology and organizational protocols;
• We should move toward an electoral system in which citizens’ voting preferences are more fairly reflected in the composition of our legislative bodies, and where majority power cannot be obtained without majority support at the polls;
• We must extend and expedite efforts to identify, condemn and curb transparently false, incendiary, conspiratorial communication in all digital and other forms;
• We should foster a political culture in which arguments are routinely scrutinized to ensure evidence-based, science-backed, logical thinking prevails over groundless assertions, no matter how colourfully or passionately expressed;
• We must promote greater ethnocultural diversity and gender equity at all levels of our representative democracy to ensure decision-making bodies, the public service and public discourse better reflect the true complexion of our ever-evolving population;
• We have to redouble efforts to improve all Canadians’ understanding of what responsible citizenship requires in a participatory democracy, recognizing the importance of both free speech and tolerance, media literacy, and basic knowledge of civics, history, geography, math and science;
• We need to recognize that achieving and maintaining a stable, constructive democratic culture in this country requires a high degree of social cohesion, political unity and mutual support across the federation’s provincial and territorial jurisdictions;
• We also need to understand that safeguarding democratic cultures in any country requires a sustained, collective commitment to promoting similar values internationally through strong, multilateral, global institutions.
It goes without saying that this really is just a shortlist. Canadians need to do much more to prevent the rise of a demagogue here.
We need to treat the Earth sustainably, we need to respect each other’s human rights and the rule of law, and we need to strive to promote social and economic justice — as well as social and economic freedom — while creating and recreating a healthy political culture.
But in those maddening, pathetic, horrifying moments at the White House presidential podium on Thursday night, Canadians were given a parting gift by Trump the Terrible: an enduring reminder that we can’t ever let politics in this country descend to such dark and dangerous depths.
Randy Boswell is a journalist and Carleton University professor.
2020/11/10 Leave a comment
Good reminder of one of the unfortunate parts of our history:
When one starts asking questions about the experience of Black Canadians during the Second World War, it doesn’t take long to land on the name Allan Bundy.
That’s because at a time when the Canadian Armed Forces is promising to crack down on systemic racism, as well as individual acts of discrimination in the ranks, Bundy’s story speaks to both.
He was one of many Black Canadians who had to overcome discrimination and racism to fight during the Second World War, says Canadian War Museum historian Andrew Burtch.
His story also highlights the long presence of racism in the Canadian Armed Forces, even as it strives today for more diversity, including by promising to end hateful conduct in the ranks.
“One of the top bullets in the most recent Canadian defence policy is looking at leveraging the diversity of the country as a strength and creating better circumstances to allow for that to happen, which would include making sure that people are supported,” Burtch said.
“Obviously there wasn’t that support before.”
Air force, navy quietly barred Black and Asian Canadians
Bundy was 19 years old when he and a white friend named Soupy Campbell went to the Halifax recruiting centre to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as pilots. It was late 1939, Germany had just invaded Poland, and Canada and its allies were mobilizing their militaries after declaring war on the Nazis.
When Bundy and Campbell walked out, however, only Soupy had been accepted to join the RCAF. Bundy, according to the stories, felt like he had been rejected because of the recruiting officer’s own racist attitudes. Such incidents had been common during the First World War, in which Bundy’s own father had served in Canada’s only all-Black unit, the No. 2 Construction Battalion.
What Bundy didn’t know at the time was that the entire RCAF, as well as the Royal Canadian Navy, were quietly barring Black and Asian Canadians from all but the most general positions. The policy wasn’t publicized, but most jobs could only go to British subjects who were white or of “pure European descent.”
When conscription was introduced a few years later, the Canadian Army came calling for Bundy. But he wanted to fly, and he wasn’t afraid to say it when an RCMP officer visited a short time later to ask why he hadn’t responded to the Army’s summons.
“I told him that I had gone to join the Air Force in 1939 and if the bullet that kills me is not good enough for the Air Force, then it is not good enough for the Army either — so take me away,” Bundy later recalled telling the Mountie.
Soon afterward, Bundy visited the recruiting station again. By now, because of a shortage of trained pilots and aircrew, the RCAF had started to open its doors to Black Canadians and others.
Even after being accepted and trained, Bundy faced a new form of discrimination. None of the white navigators wanted to serve on his Bristol Beaufighter.
It was only after a sergeant by the name of Elwood Cecil Wright volunteered that Bundy became the first Black Canadian to fly a combat mission during the war.
During their first mission, the two sank a pair of enemy ships off the coast of Norway. They would fly 42 more missions together before the war ended and Bundy returned home to Halifax.
Service changed attitudes in Canadian society
The Canadian War Museum credits Bundy and dozens of other Black Canadians who served with the RCAF during the Second World War as having helped “change attitudes toward visible minorities in the military, and in Canadian society.”
Kathy Grant is the founder of the Legacy Voices Project, which seeks to share the stories of Black Canadians who served during the two world wars. One of those was Grant’s own father, Owen Rowe, who travelled to Canada from Barbados to volunteer for the Second World War and asked her to start the memorial project.
Grant believes the war helped pave the way for more rights and freedoms for Black Canadians.
Some such as Lincoln Alexander, who went on to become lieutenant-governor of Ontario, were able to take advantage of the benefits offered by Ottawa to veterans. Many also felt empowered to fight for those rights, and found allies in former comrades-in-arms who were white.
“They wanted things to change,” Grant said. “They were thinking: ‘Well, why are we fighting? Here it is, some of us are dying and they’re out of line by just denying us these rights.’ But it was a large shift for Canada as a whole.”
irony of Black and Asian Canadians being discriminated against by the military at a time when Canada was fighting fascism and intolerance overseas has not been lost on historians and others over the years.
Veterans Affairs Canada does not have official records on how many Black Canadians served in the two world wars, though it estimates around 2,600 served in the First World War and several thousand more in the second.
It credits the latter with having returned home “with a heightened awareness of the value of freedom and their right to be treated as equals.”
Fight to address racism continues
That fight continues in some parts of the Canadian Armed Forces today.
Top defence officials apologized this summer for their slow response to questions about systemic racism in the military as the Black Lives Movement gathered momentum. They promised to take action.
They have also laid out a series of orders designed to get tough on hate in the ranks after several high-profile incidents involving service members associating with extremist groups.
The military has also made some progress in recruiting more visible minorities as part of a drive to become more diverse.
About 9.2 per cent of service members were visible minorities in January, up from 7.4 per cent three years earlier. The Forces’ target is 11.8 per cent of those in uniform. It also has targets for female and Indigenous representation.
Grant laments that the stories of Black Canadians in the military are not well known, but says there has been more attention in recent years, including as the Black Lives Matter movement highlights issues of systemic racism in the military and elsewhere.
“There’s so much negativity when it comes to members of our community,” she said.
“There’s so many stories of men that have gone on to great heights as a result of serving…So it’s sharing those stories. A lot of times, you don’t see a lot of members of our community featured in Remembrance Day. That’s starting to change.”
Source: Black Canadians fought racism, discrimination to serve in Second World War
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