Bill Blair orders prison data to be turned over, but does the data even exist?

2020/09/11 Leave a comment

Good question in the header (follow-up article to Paul Wells’ Another farce on Bill Blair’s watch:

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair says he has ordered Correctional Service Canada to hand over data to an independent panel reviewing its practises, nearly a year after the panel first requested the information. But new documents from the corrections agency reveal it may be failing to accurately collect the data altogether.

In an interview with Maclean’s, Blair vows that “we are working very hard to make sure that we are able to provide that information and access to what the panel needs before they would consider continuing their job.”

Anthony Doob, the former head of the panel, says he still hasn’t heard from Correctional Services and has not been convinced to continue his work. “I need to know that we can actually do our work,” he told Maclean’s.

Last month, the panel tapped by the Trudeau government to review the implementation of its Structured Intervention Units (SIUs) was disbanded. Its scathing final report pointed to a lack of cooperation from Blair and Correctional Services, which rendered the panel “powerless to accomplish the job that it was set up to do.”

The new SIUs were supposed to replace an existing solitary confinement regime, which courts in Ontario and British Columbia called unconstitutional and, possibly, torture. Yet when Doob and his panel tried to analyze whether the new units were complying with the court orders and a new legal regime, they were stonewalled.

Doob says the information is crucial to the implementation of these units and that “the bulk, or all of the data, that we’re asking for is stuff they should want for their own purposes.”

But Correctional Services was unable to turn over the necessary data before the panel’s appointment ended in August. It has yet to offer a timeline on when it might supply the statistics.

On Wednesday, Correctional Services posted a request for information to the Canadian government’s procurement platform, seeking companies capable of updating its offender management system. The system, which tracks every inmate in custody, was implemented in the early 1990s and last updated in 2002.

The system governs just about every part of Canadian prisons, and is responsible for tracking the accommodations and mental health status of inmates. It is also the system that monitors inmates placed in the Structured Intervention Units.

Correctional Services first identified the need to update the system in 2015. Today, the database is strained, the document reveals. The systems to input and check crucial information on inmates, including their risk of suicide, “are manual, cumbersome, redundant and open to potential human error in data entry.” Other indicators, such as social history, are “not well integrated into the overall process.”

Correctional Services also notes that, on several fronts including inmate discipline, the process is “cumbersome and relies on paper and humans to ensure that information is gathered.”

Doob says that while their computer systems may be “not ideal,” that technology is no excuse. “They do lots of research themselves using their old system to get data. And, as I’ve said many times, if they truly cannot get the data for the panel, that means that they don’t know what is happening, in a systematic way, in their institutions.”

Often, the only recourse for inmates to contest the conditions of their confinement is to file a grievance. As Correctional Services notes in the procurement documents, the “offender grievance process is approximately 90 per cent paper based. This process has resulted in delays in processing offender grievances from the 60-80 day policy prescribed timeframes to up to three years.”

The service did provide a batch of files to the panel in May but, Doob says, the tables were unusable, inaccurate and essentially worthless for his study. For example, he says, the data noted when an inmate had a mental health issue—but not whether it was noted before, during or after their stay in the Structured Intervention Unit. The service employee responsible for data analysis admitted the information was essentially worthless, Doob says.

Maclean’s asked Correctional Services about deficiencies in their inmate tracking system, but has yet to receive a response.

Blair acknowledges that “Correction Services Canada struggled to collect and then make available the information in a timely way.” The panel first alerted Blair to its issues obtaining data in mid-March, then filed an interim report, noting “this panel has not been allowed to do its work” on July 23, and filed its final report on Aug. 11.

It wasn’t until the details of the report were released by Vice on Aug. 26 that Blair’s office responded. The day after, Blair called Doob to discuss next steps.

Asked why he didn’t intervene sooner, Blair didn’t answer. “When it was brought to my attention, I immediately gave direction that the information was to be collected and made available to the panel,” he says.

Doob says that, even if Correctional Services produces the data, he’s not sure he’ll rejoin the panel. He wants assurances that he’ll be able to properly review the service’s practises, including on-the-ground access to the new cells. “I’ve heard zero from CSC,” he reports.

Zilla Jones, a Winnipeg-based lawyer and a fellow member of the panel, has clients who have been placed in the Structured Intervention Units at the Stony Mountain penitentiary in Manitoba. She says the upgrades to some of the cells have been limited to “cosmetic” changes, such as a new coat of paint and some posters.

In a series of court rulings declaring the old system unconstitutional, the courts of appeal in Ontario and British Columbia ruled that inmates must be given more than two hours outside their cell per day. As part of the new Structured Intervention Units, the Trudeau government vowed that 20 hours per day would be the maximum amount of time per day that inmates would be locked up.

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Correctional Service Canada has locked some inmates—especially those who are awaiting tests for the virus, or who exhibit symptoms—in the Structured Intervention Units for upwards of 23 hours a day.

Blair disagrees that doing so has run afoul of the courts’ rulings. “That was not for the purposes of either administrative or disciplinary segregation,” he says. “It was medical isolation for those who were ill.”

Given that Correctional Services has not been collecting data on those put in these units, Doob and the panel have questioned if Ottawa even knows whether the new law is being followed.

Nevertheless, Blair is confident. “The law is explicit, in that it eliminates the administrative and disciplinary segregation in those institutions,” Blair says. “We have eliminated [solitary confinement].”

Source: Bill Blair orders prison data to be turned over, but does the data even exist?

Filed under Government Tagged with , , , ,

Racism against Indigenous groups, immigration at issue as Chile debates new constitution

2020/09/11 Leave a comment

Of interest as a adopts to increased immigration and comes to terms with its history with Indigenous peoples:

With an era-defining vote for a new constitution fast approaching, issues related to racial diversity have led to outbreaks of violence and political strikes up and down Chile.

Like other parts of Latin America, Chile has grappled with racism against its Indigenous groups, but political events in other countries, such as Venezuela and Haiti, have added to a recent surge in immigration, heightening debates around ethnicity.

An increasingly diverse Chile is posing challenges to the current 1980 constitution, penned during the 1973-90 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which treats all residents as simply “Chilean.” Conservatives argue that that includes Indigenous people, while opponents say it ignores Chile’s history of genocide against them.

An indigenous Mapuche leader, Celestino Córdova, ended a 107-day hunger strike last month over what he and fellow prison inmates saw as inadequate handling of their requests to serve sentences at home as COVID-19 threatened prisons — while many non-Mapuche prisoners were allowed to do so. Córdova’s strike was joined by 26 other Mapuche prisoners, many of who remain on strike. The U.N. sent a fact-finding team to investigate, and some protests broke out over the treatment of the Mapuche prisoners.

Some Mapuche groups showed solidarity with the prisoners, occupying municipal buildings, including one in the river-fringed town of Curacautín in the southern Araucanía region, which is home to most of the 2 million Mapuche people and is center stage in a centuries-long land dispute. The Mapuches claim ancestral rights over large territories in Araucanía.

When the national police forcibly evicted the occupiers, they were joined by a mob of townspeople breaking a coronavirus curfew, brandishing weapons and attacking Mapuche vehicles as they shouted racist slurs, which was captured on social media.

A spate of arson attacks erupted in Araucanía targeting private trucks traveling up and down the Pan-American Highway, Chile’s main thoroughfare for freight. Such incidents are commonly associated with the conflict between the state and the Indigenous group. The last major string of arson attacks occurred after police in 2018 killed a young unarmed Mapuche farmer, Camilo Catrillanca, in 2018, with an attempted cover-up sparking lasting outrage.

Last month, a 9-year-old girl needed surgery after she was seriously injured by a bullet when her father’s truck cabin was ambushed and set ablaze. Several truckers began a weeklong strike, which ended Sept. 2, to demand more protection from the attacks. Scores of colorful trucks with beaming headlights formed full and partial barricades up and down the Pan-American Highway and on a key road between the capital, Santiago, and its coastal port Valparaíso, over 400 miles north of Araucanía.

A new constitution and a multicultural Chile

Chilean voters will go to the polls Oct. 25 to decide whether they want a new constitution and, if so, which of two methods should be used to write it. Changes would be voted on in a second referendum expected in 2022.

Many see the plebiscite as a way to create fairer conditions for Chile’s native people, as well as the rising number of immigrants, two wider groups who together make up almost 20 percent of the population.

“We are in a huge transformation as a society in Chile,” said Claudio Fuentes, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina and Chile’s Diego Portales University.

“The recent protests have brought about the combination of several movements, like the feminist movement to promote sexual diversity, and movements around ethnicity, all of who symbolically use the flags of the Indigenous groups during protests because they are seen as the worst affected and most discriminated,” Fuentes said. “A new constitution could change the way that Chile treats its minorities.”

Fuentes said Chile might become a plurinational country that recognizes the distinct nationality of its native people in its constitution, like New Zealand or Norway.

“Some are opposed to this, whereas others want a constitution with a broader recognition of its multicultural society, which is more inclusive of those who don’t necessarily identify as Chilean,” he said.

But with its historical roots, it could be hard for Chile to accept diversity, Fuentes said.

“Chile was built upon discriminatory values that saw Indigenous people and other ethnicities, like darker-skinned people from Peru or Bolivia, who Chile warred with during its formation, as second-class citizens, while the elite, with their European heritage from Spain, are seen as first class,” he said.

A dramatic increase in immigration

Immigration has increased massively in Chile, from just 1.8 percent of the population in 2010 to 7.8 percent, with about 1.5 million immigrants in the country, according to a 2019 estimate by the Jesuit Migrant Service.

Venezuelans make up almost a third (31 percent) of the immigrant population, and Peruvians are 13 percent. Chile has the largest number of Haitian immigrants outside the U.S.

The influx of mostly Black Haitians since 2014 has made immigration more visible, and coalition parties touted anti-immigration policies for the first time in recent history during the 2017 presidential elections. In August, #masinmigrantesmascesantia — which translates as “more immigrants more unemployment” — trended on Twitter.

“Since 2018, we have seen immigrants being used as scapegoats for unemployment, risks to the health system, housing and urban problems, low wages, unpredictability in the labor market and even COVID-19, which in Chile has obviously been caused by our insertion in global dynamics and the travel to Europe and the U.S.,” said Luis Thayer, a social scientist at Silva Henríquez Catholic University in Santiago.

It’s a dangerous trend for Chile, said Thayer, and an issue that should be tackled in a new constitutiion.

“As long as governments continue to promote nationalism in their responses to the recent crises we are seeing globally and in Chile, they are risking an extinction of our societies and the frameworks that support them,” Thayer said. “This referendum gives us a chance to redress this, at least in this country. We haven’t had a better chance to do so.”

Source: Racism against Indigenous groups, immigration at issue as Chile debates new constitution

Filed under Aboriginal, Immigration Tagged with ,

Justin Trudeau unveils aid for Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs

2020/09/11 Leave a comment

Answering some of the calls for action by the Parliamentary Black Caucus:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s long-promised action to tackle systemic racism is starting to take shape with a new program that will deliver up to $221 million in public and private funding for Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs.

The announcement Wednesday came almost three months after Trudeau vowed to take sweeping action “very soon” to address racism entrenched in Canadian police and other institutions. At the time, in mid-June, the Parliamentary Black Caucus in Ottawa — chaired by Liberal MP Greg Fergus — released a detailed call-to-action that was signed by more than 100 MPs in Trudeau’s caucus, including more than half his government’s cabinet.

That declaration included calls for increased supports to Black businesses, which Trudeau acknowledged Wednesday face “systemic barriers” that have been “exacerbated” by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We need an economic recovery that’s inclusive and equitable for all Canadians,” Trudeau said, speaking at the Hxouse innovation “think-centre” for entrepreneurs on Toronto’s waterfront.

“An investment in Black excellence is an investment in economic empowerment, and economic empowerment is an essential part of justice.”

Billed as the Canadian government’s first “Black entrepreneurship program,” the initiative will involve $93 million from the federal government over four years. This will create an “ecosystem fund” to help Black entrepreneurs access training and capital to support their businesses, as well as a separate “hub” to collect and share data on Black businesses across the country, Trudeau said.

Financial institutions including RBC, BMO, Scotiabank, TD and CIBC will also contribute up to $128 million to a new fund that will lend out sums ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 to Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs.

Trudeau said the program is needed because such institutions have a history of failing to support Black businesses, and that his government hopes the private sector will carry on lending more money after this program expires.

“It would be lovely to imagine that, with four years of working with almost all financial institutions on delivering capital, it will become very obvious to those institutions what we and so many of us in this room already know: that investing in Black businesses is an amazing way to create wealth and prosperity for everyone,” Trudeau said.

Chedwick Creightney, 56, is the owner and chief executive officer of VR Planet, a virtual-reality arcade and event organizer in Ajax. As a long-time entrepreneur who is Black, Creightney said he has experienced discrimination when trying to get loans for his businesses, to the point that he has teamed up with non-Black partners to ensure his applications are received more favourably.

“It’s exhausting,” he said, but added that it has been a welcome relief to feel more comfortable talking about his experience in the months since the global anti-racism movement began with the death of George Floyd in the United States, after a police officer was seen kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes.

“We’re not asking for anything exceptional. We’re asking for equality,” said Creightney.

There is evidence that the COVID-19 crisis has hit Black and other minority groups hard. In late July, Toronto’s medical officer of health published data that showed Black people in the city were disproportionately infected with the coronavirus. In its “fiscal snapshot” this summer, the federal government also reported that women and racialized workers are being “most affected due to their significant representation in Canada’s health care, elder care, child care, personal support work, and essential service sectors.”

Earlier this year, the Black Business and Professional Association surveyed its members in Ontario and found that 80 per cent of them indicated they weren’t able to access the federal government’s wage subsidy program — which has since been expanded and made easier to qualify for — compared with 37 per cent in the broader private sector.

Fergus, the Black caucus chair who was on hand for Wednesday’s announcement, told reporters that Black people continued to face discrimination in the 186 years since slavery was abolished in colonial Canada. He cited examples of how Black Canadians were denied land deeds and faced hurdles accessing money that white Canadians never have.

And while Fergus welcomed the new program to support Black businesses, he also stressed how the government needs to go further in its effort to address racism in Canada, calling it “the beginning” of an effort to ensure Canadians are truly treated equally.

“It will not, in one fell swoop, eliminate all systemic discrimination and the consequences, but we’ve taken a positive step forward,” he said.

Source: Justin Trudeau unveils aid for Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

The Whitelash Next Time

2020/09/11 Leave a comment

Of note despite treating all white Americans the same:

Two months. That’s how long it took for white Americans’ support of Black Lives Matter—which climbed to an unprecedented peak in June after the brutal police murder of George Floyd—to tumble back toward preprotest levels. Over the same period, surveys show, declining numbers of white respondents cited anti-Black racism as a “big problem” in American society. An NPR/Ipsos poll from late August found white people are the racial group least likely to report taking even the most minor “actions to better understand racial issues in America” since protests began sweeping the country. Just half of white Americans concede “racism is built into the American economy, government, and educational systems.” And 49 percent believe America has already done enough “to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans.”

It’s always true that most white folks are unbothered and unmoved by anti-Black discrimination and violence; the steadfast endurance of American institutional racism proves that. It is also clear from history that white anti-racism has always had a dangerously short shelf life. Ignore the barrels of digital ink spilled lately about white people’s new willingness to reckon with structural racism. When the pendulum swings toward Black equality and full citizenship, white supremacy mounts a counteroffensive.

Cornell University historian Lawrence Glickman notes the word “backlash” gained circulation during the civil rights movement in 1963 as a shorthand for the “topsy-turvy rebellion in which white people with relative societal power perceived themselves as victimized by what they described as overly aggressive African Americans demanding equal rights.” The term summed up the most reliable white reaction to Black rights dating at least to Reconstruction, when the mere facts of Black emancipation and voter enfranchisement were construed as provocations for justifiable white racist terrorism. Between 1865—when six former Confederate soldiers founded the Ku Klux Klan—and 1950, nearly 6,500 Black men, women, and children were lynched for affronts that included bumping into a white woman and not using “Mister” when talking to a white man. “The more I studied the situation,” wrote Ida B. Wells, “the more I was convinced that the [white] Southerner had never gotten over his resentment that the Negro was no longer his plaything, his servant, and his source of income.”

Refugees of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans to the North and West to flee that terror, were subjected to yet more white violence. Enraged by Black folks seeking equal employment and housing, as well as returning Black World War I veterans’ demands for the rights at home they had fought for abroad, white mobs in at least 25 riots around the country—including in Chicago; Syracuse, N.Y.; and Washington, D.C.—killed over 250 African Americans during the Red Summer of 1919. Those murders foreshadowed anti-Black pogroms in the thriving Black enclaves of Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 and Rosewood, Fla., in 1923.

The white backlash is typified by what Glickman identifies as “its smoldering resentment, its belief that the movement [for Black rights is] proceeding ‘too fast,’ its demands for emotional and psychological sympathy, and its displacement of African Americans’ struggles with its own claims of grievance.” Case in point: Just months after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, The New York Times reported pervasive white anger over “inverse discrimination.” Then as now, backlashers maligned Black protests and uprisings, insisting property destruction canceled out Black deservedness of human rights. In one 1963 survey, 73 percent of white Southerners and 65 percent of white Northerners said civil rights demonstrations “hurt the Negro’s cause for racial equality,” and multiple white New York City dwellers told the Times in 1964 that “nonviolent civil rights demonstrations had hurt Negroes’ chances” (my emphasis). Historical revisionism has attempted to erase the fact that 75 percent of white folks disapproved of Martin Luther King Jr. in early 1968. In the 1960s, when he was leading protests, a survey found that just 36 percent of white Americansthought he was helping “the Negro cause of civil rights.”

“The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement,” Carol Anderson wrote in her 2016 book White Rage. That rage helped ardent segregationist and presidential candidate George Wallace winfive Southern states in 1968 and five primaries in 1972, including Michigan and Maryland. Promises to send “welfare bums back to work” and to defend white home sellers’ right to “discriminate against Negroes” propelledRonald Reagan to California’s governorship in 1966 and later to the Oval Office. It is right to call the 2016 election of Donald Trump a white backlash against the first Black president—one so fervent, it won poorly educated, college-degree-holding, and young white folks alike—but it is also critical to recognize it as just one white backlash among many. Trump’s presidency is no anomaly but a confirmation of America’s pattern of Black political progress and white retaliation.

Source: The Whitelash Next Time

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

COVID-19 disproportionately impacted immigrants and refugees in Ontario, new report finds

2020/09/10 Leave a comment

Better data confirming what we know:

The spread of COVID-19 has disproportionately affected immigrants, refugees and those who live in low-income neighbourhoods in Ontario, a new report has found.

The report released Wednesday by ICES, a not-for-profit research institute focusing on health-related data in Ontario, found that while immigrants and refugees in the province accounted for only about a quarter of those tested for COVID-19 between January and June, they represented 43.5 per cent of all positive cases.

“We document disproportionately higher rates of infection among those who landed in Ontario as economic caregivers, refugees, those with lower levels of education and language fluency, those who currently live in lower income neighbourhoods and with more crowded housing,” Dr. Astrid Guttmann, Chief Science Officer at ICES and lead author on the report, said in a statement.

“Apart from addressing many of (the) root causes of higher risk of infections, very high test positivity in certain groups of immigrants also suggests that there may be important barriers to testing that will be important to address if there is a second wave in Ontario this fall.”

The data was pulled from test results conducted between January 15 and June 13. According to the report, rates of testing were lower for most immigrants and refugees compared with Canadian-born and long-term residents—with an exception for economic caregivers who tend to work in health-care and were prioritized for testing.

The data found that of the 4.4 per cent of Canadian-born and long-term residents tested for COVID-19 in Ontario, 2.9 per cent tested positive.

Of the 3.4 per cent of people who identify as immigrants or refugees who were tested for COVID-19, 8.1 per cent received a positive diagnosis.

Refugees alone had the highest positivity rate within that time period at 10.4 per cent.

Chart

The report also found that while testing positivity peaked at the beginning of April among Canada-born and long-term residents, there were two “pronounced peaks of positivity” for immigrants, refugees and newcomers in April and May respectfully.

“The pandemic has sharpened the focus on structural and societal inequalities that have long existed,” the report reads. “These inequities put many racialized and immigrant populations at higher risk of both contracting the infection and suffering poor outcomes.”

The highest rates of positivity in Canada were found in racialized immigrants and refugees from Central, Western and East Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and South Asia, the report found. The rates were also higher for those living in low-income neighbourhoods.

Public health units with larger immigrant populations such as Toronto, Peel Region, Durham Region, Waterloo, Windsor and York also reported a high number of COVID-19 positive patients among that demographic.

In Toronto specifically, 4,027 immigrants and refugees have tested positive for COVID-19 (9.8 per cent of those tested) compared to 3,788 Canadian-born patients (4.9 per cent of those tested).

What data was available and what was missing?

The general findings presented in the report are not necessarily new. Advocacy groups have been calling on all levels of government to support the gathering of race and socio-economic data for months, arguing that marginalized communities are disproportionately contracting or dying from COVID-19.

As a result of these calls, the City of Toronto began collecting race-based data in May.

Toronto Public Health said that of the data collected between May 20 and July 16, 83 per cent of known COVID-19 cases involve members of racialized communities.

It also found that patients with a household income level of $50,000 or less represents more than 50 per cent of reported infections in the city, despite the fact that the 2016 census revealed only 30 per cent of Toronto’s population reported being in that income bracket.

The data released by city officials are based on voluntary questions collected by a local public health unit.

Provincially, officials and politicians have all said they support the collection of race and income-based data, but they have yet to provide any information about the trends they are seeing.

In mid-June, the government proposed regulatory changes that would allow those who test positive for COVID-19 to be asked about their race, income, languages spoken and household size.

The questions are optional and the government said personal privacy would be protected. Since then, not much has been said about the data collection.

The ICES report said they were limited in the creation of the report by incomplete immigration data and could only include information on immigrants or refugees who landed in Ontario from January 1985 to May 2017 and who became permanent residents. They also included second-generation immigrant children under the age of 19 who were born in Ontario to permanent residents.

A “newcomer,” a status defined separately from an immigrant or refugee, is described as an individual who became eligible for OHIP after May 31, 2017

The authors also noted that ICES lacked data on “important risk factors for testing and positivity” such as occupation and living conditions.

“We currently do not have comprehensive data on important outcomes such as hospitalization and death,” the report says. “We have data on demographic and some census-based characteristics but not on the critical structural factors that play an important role in shaping inequities.”

ICES was able to access information on the health-care sector. The report found that employment as a health-care worker, especially among women, accounted for a disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases among immigrants and refugees. Among the 36 per cent of women employed as health-care workers and who tested positive in Ontario, 45 per cent were within that demographic.

Inequities ‘are complex’ and often rooted in racism

The report suggests that the “causes of these inequities are complex and often rooted in social and structural inequities, including systemic racism.”

It notes that a large proportion of immigrants, refugees and newcomers to Canada hold temporary or minimum-wage jobs at facilities where physical distancing is difficult. These positions may also not have paid sick leave or other health benefits.

ICES says that employment in any of these sectors— such as occupations in retail, factories or transportation– “is considered precarious” and could impact testing and quarantine.

Other factors such as language barriers, education and accessibility to quality healthcare could impact whether a person gets a COVID-19 test.

The not-for-profit is calling for more accessible testing options ahead of a possible second-wave in the fall as well as better training and enforcement of safety measures for those at risk of COVID-19 exposure in the workplace.

“A continued focus is needed on securing funding to house those who cannot safely quarantine in their homes or are homeless, as well as for income supplements for workers must quarantine who do not have employer-sponsored sick leave,” the report says.

The report also noted that the findings should be interpreted in the context of Ontario’s testing strategy. Initially, local public health units were only testing those in essential workplaces, those who had recently travelled and for those with acute medical conditions. Later that strategy evolved to include long-term care homes, hospitalized patients, and the general population, including asymptomatic patients.

“This means that some groups are over-represented in the testing numbers and that positive cases include those who were symptomatic at the time of testing, as well as those who were asymptomatic,” the report says.

“This may distort some associations of characteristics with both testing rates and potential to test positive. It also means that there is an unknown number of untested infected individuals in the general population.

Source: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-disproportionately-impacted-immigrants-and-refugees-in-ontario-new-report-finds-1.5097363

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Burton: China threatens and intimidates people within Canada as Ottawa remains silent

2020/09/10 1 Comment

Harsh words, not without merit:

Notwithstanding its nimble handling of a pandemic, Justin Trudeau’s government will be vulnerable in the next election if voters don’t see meaningful action replace Canada’s passive rhetoric on China’s human rights, trade and hostage diplomacy.

This summer, the Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights and the Commons Special Committee on Canada-China Relations heard harrowing testimony from witnesses who say Chinese government agents threaten them and their families in Canada and in China.

Canadian Chinese and Canadian Uighur activists told of being threatened with rape or even death if they keep speaking out against violations committed by China against the Uighurs, or the persecution of Hong Kong residents clinging to political rights.

Witnesses pleaded for Canada to stop this intimidation campaign being co-ordinated by the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa and its consulates in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. All people in Canada are entitled to the protection of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including Chinese Canadians or citizens of China here in Canada as students or for other purposes.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s nonresponse to calls to protect Chinese Canadians amounts to tacit consent for Beijing to continue acting as if ethnic Chinese, Tibetans and Uighurs within Canada should still be subject to repression by China’s Communist regime.

Sadly, this is consistent with Canada’s nonaction on China. Regarding offering sanctuary to Hong Kong activists facing persecution due to repressive moves by Beijing, we are told that Ottawa is thinking it over. Ditto to applying Magnitsky sanctions against Chinese officials complicit in genocidal measures against Uighur people, including forced sterilization of women.

These sanctions are already applied against officials in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other countries engaging in human rights abuses less serious than China’s. If Ottawa defers these decisions as long as they have delayed ruling on Huawei 5G, Canada’s sagging reputation as a weak link in maintaining international rules-based order will be confirmed.

Magnitsky sanctions would seriously impact China’s “red nobility,” who park dubious assets in Canada. For them this country serves as a bolt hole in case of being on the losing end of factional struggles that characterize China’s unstable nondemocracy.

This includes Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei CFO with a $5-million, six-bedroom residence plus a $13-million estate more than triple that size in one of Vancouver’s toniest neighbourhoods. (Meng was carrying seven passports when detained by Canadian authorities.) People like this are not so concerned about military conflicts or decoupling from the West, as they are of Magnitsky cancellation of their visas and confiscation of their overseas money and assets.

To maintain power, Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping must be seen as protecting the interests of Communist elites. If they believe his mismanagement of relations with Canada will impact them directly, Xi has a major problem. But this point appears lost on Canadian policy-makers, those same people who seem in no hurry to consider a Canadian iteration of Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act.

That law has led to numerous former senior Australian government people resigning from the lucrative China-related boards and consultancies. Such plums are a key tactic of China’s covert and corrupt approach to cultivating influential Western “friends.”

What of the sotto voce reservations expressed about the impact of Canada doing anything that China would not like on the fate of hostages Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig? After more than 600 days of incarceration, Ottawa’s refrain “we are working very hard” to achieve their release has worn thin. The fact is, Beijing will hold these two innocent men for as long as it benefits the furtherance of China’s agenda in Canada, regardless of any impact on China’s global credibility.

Currently, Beijing has got us where they want us. The tragic fallacy of Canada’s silence is that the longer we remain passive in the face of China’s appalling violations of international trade, diplomacy and human rights, the longer we can expect Kovrig and Spavor to remain in Chinese prison hell.

Charles Burton is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, and non-resident senior fellow of the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague. He is a former professor of political science at Brock University, and served as a diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing.

Source: China threatens and intimidates people within Canada as Ottawa remains silent

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with ,

Oscars make historic change to encourage diversity in best picture nominees

2020/09/10 Leave a comment

Overdue:

In a historic move, the Oscars are raising the inclusion bar for best picture nominees starting with the 96th Academy Awards in 2024. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday laid out sweeping eligibility reforms to the best picture category intended to encourage diversity and equitable representation on screen and off, addressing gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and disability.

The film academy has established four broad representation categories: On screen; among the crew; at the studio; and in opportunities for training and advancement in other aspects of the film’s development and release.

Each standard has detailed subcategories as well. To meet the on-screen representation standard, a film must either have at least one lead character or a significant supporting character be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, at least 30 per cent of secondary roles must be from two underrepresented groups or the main storyline, theme or narrative must be focused on an underrepresented group.

According to the academy, underrepresented groups include women, people of colour, people who identify as LGBTQ or people with disabilities

The best picture award, which is handed out to the producers of a film, is the one category which every film academy member can vote for. Earlier this year, the South Korean film Parasite became the first non-English language film to win the award.

‘Long-lasting, essential change’

All other categories will be held to their current eligibility requirements.

“The aperture must widen to reflect our diverse global population in both the creation of motion pictures and in the audiences who connect with them,” said Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson in a written statement. “We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our industry.”

The second category addresses the creative leadership and crew composition of a film. In order to meet the standard a film must have either at least two leadership positions or department heads be from an underrepresented group and at least one be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group; at least six other crew be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group; or at least 30 per cent of the film’s crew be from an underrepresented group.

The third category deals with paid internship and apprenticeship opportunities as well as training opportunities for below-the-line workers, and the fourth category addresses representation in marketing, publicity and distribution teams.

The inclusion standards form will be confidential and will not be required for best picture hopefuls for the 94th and 95th Academy Awards.

The inclusion standards were developed by a task force led by academy governors DeVon Franklin and Jim Gianopulos and in consultation with the Producers Guild of America. They also took into account diversity standards used by the British Film Institute and the British Academy of Film and Television Awards.

These changes will also not affect the 93rd Academy Awards, although the academy has had to make a few alterations because of COVID-19’s effects on the movie business, including pushing the ceremony back two months to April 25, 2021 and allowing films that debuted on a streaming service to be eligible for best picture.

Source: Oscars make historic change to encourage diversity in best picture nominees

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Quebec judge who asked woman to remove hijab apologizes, 5 years later

2020/09/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

A Quebec court judge, who refused to hear the case of a Montreal woman because she was wearing a hijab, has finally apologized for the incident, more than five years after it happened.

At an online hearing of the Quebec Council of the Magistrature on Tuesday, a lawyer for the council read Judge Eliana Marengo’s apology to Rania El-Alloul.

The council is the body responsible for disciplining judges in the province.

In her statement, Marengo said she acknowledged that she erred in asking El-Alloul to remove her hijab, that she regretted any inconvenience and that she never intended any offence or disrespect.

Marengo addressed the fact that at the time she had compared El-Alloul’s hijab to a hat and sunglasses being worn in the courtroom.

“My reference to hats and sunglasses was simply meant to exemplify how the rules of decorum are generally applied in the courtroom and was most certainly not meant to disrespect either you or your beliefs,” Marengo said.

She concluded by offering El-Alloul her most sincere apologies.

El-Alloul read her own statement in response, saying she accepted Marengo’s apology.

“I remember that day in the courtroom like it was yesterday. I couldn’t imagine that I would be turned away from the justice system because of my hijab, that my rights would be taken away because of my beliefs,” El-Alloul said.

“I hope she understands the pain she caused me, and why it is so important for her to account for her actions. Our justice system is not made for some and not others. No, this is a democracy, where everyone is to be treated equally before the law,” she continued.

“I accept her apology. This is what my faith teaches me.”

‘Not suitably dressed’

The controversy dates back to February 2015 when El-Alloul was in court trying to get back her impounded car.

“In my opinion, you are not suitably dressed,” Marengo told El-Alloul at the time. The judge said the court was a secular space, and no religious symbols should be worn by those before it.

The case was suspended, and El-Alloul eventually got her car back. But the story made headlines around the world.

Dozens of people, including El-Alloul, ultimately filed complaints with the Council of the Magistrature.

El-Alloul’s complaint was dismissed on a technicality, but the council agreed to look into the dozens of other complaints on the matter.

Marengo challenged the authority of the council to examine the complaints. She sought leave to appeal a Quebec Court of Appeal decision that unanimously found she was wrong to bar El-Alloul from her courtroom.

But in 2018, the Supreme Court refused to hear Marengo’s challenge.

Change of heart

The Council of the Magistrature sent a letter earlier this summer to the complainants, informing them of today’s hearing.

“The purpose of this hearing will be to study a settlement proposal from the prosecutors on file, including a letter of apology from Judge Marengo to Mrs. El-Alloul,” the letter said.

The council also told the complainants the apology would be released to the public, in exchange for dropping the disciplinary charges against Marengo.

The settlement was jointly proposed by Marengo’s lawyers and the lawyer handling the complaint for the council.

The panel of judges presiding over the hearing said it would take time to consider today’s arguments before deciding whether to accept the settlement.

Source: Quebec judge who asked woman to remove hijab apologizes, 5 years later

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 9 September Update

2020/09/10 Leave a comment

Highlights:

Deaths per million: USA now higher than Sweden, Australia now higher than Atlantic Canada

Infections per million: France now higher than UK, India now higher than Germany and Ontario, British Columbia now higher than Canada less Quebec


Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Hyder: Canada needs to get its stalled immigration system back on track

2020/09/09 Leave a comment

The Canadian big business perspective, arguing that Canada should go back to the previous immigration targets given a larger population means more consumers and hence business revenues.

However, it focusses on GDP, not per capita GDP, it ignores the fact that previous recessions have hit hardest on recently arrived immigrants and have long-term impact on their earnings.

Moreover, an almost cult-like fixation on previously announced target without any serious reexamination of whether they remain appropriate is  incredibly short-sighted. The only interesting point is the the reference to Anna Triandafyllidou’s innovation proposal for virtual immigration (for knowledge industries), the rest is simply repeating previous arguments:

The effects of COVID-19 on Canada’s economy can be measured in many ways. Some are obvious: millions unable to work, thousands of firms forced to close their doors, more than $250-billion in emergency government spending.

Less obvious, but of potentially greater significance to Canada’s long-term economic health, is the impact of the pandemic on immigration.

Canada’s ability to attract newcomers to its shores has long been one of this country’s greatest strengths and competitive advantages. Immigration enriches the social fabric of the nation while boosting the economy, helping to offset a low birth rate and an aging population.

Immigrants bring energy, skills, new ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. They start companies, fill skill shortages, buy houses and pay taxes.

It’s no exaggeration to say – as Marco Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, declared in a speech to the Canadian Club of Toronto last Feb. 28 – that the future of Canada “hinges on immigration.”

The minister couldn’t have foreseen it at the time, but less than a month later Canada responded to the global pandemic by temporarily closing its borders to all non-essential foreign travellers.

Overnight, the country’s intake of immigrants – which had been expected to hit 341,000 this year – slowed to a trickle.

In April, Canada welcomed just 4,140 new permanent residents, 85 per cent fewer than in the same month in 2019. Since then, the pace of admissions has gradually picked up, reaching 11,000 in May and 19,200 in June.

Still, at the current rate we can expect to see 170,000 fewer permanent residents entering the country in 2020 than planned, according to a recent report by RBC Economics.

The collapse in immigration means Canada’s population is currently experiencing its slowest growth since 2015. That will have important implications across many sectors, including residential construction, industries with labour shortages, and Canada’s postsecondary education system.

Canada currently ranks third in the world as a destination for international students. In 2019, 642,000 foreign students injected more than $22-billion into the economy, supporting 170,000 jobs.

The good news is that, despite the new coronavirus, Canadian officials are continuing to process new applications for permanent and temporary residence, albeit at a reduced rate due to physical distancing and other pandemic-related restrictions.

In addition, Mr. Mendicino has removed at least some of the obstacles standing in the way of would-be immigrants. Recently he introduced a special “one-time” pathway to permanent residency for refugee claimants who are working in front-line health and long-term care jobs.

He also announced that visitors to Canada who have a valid job offer will be able to apply for a work permit without the normal requirement to leave the country. The temporary policy is aimed at helping employers who continue to face challenges recruiting and hiring international workers during the pandemic.

Such measures are welcome, even though they won’t make a big difference to Canada’s immigration numbers.

There’s no getting around the fact that the longer the COVID-19 pandemic persists, the more difficult it will be for the country to meet its goal of more than one million new permanent residents between 2020 and 2022.

What can be done to close the gap? Anna Triandafyllidou, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University, has proposed a workaround for highly skilled people who have a job offer in Canada but are unable to get here because of travel restrictions. Under the rules, they can’t obtain a work permit or a social insurance number until they enter the country, which means they can’t be paid.

The solution, Ms. Triandafyllidou says, is technology. Her idea is to issue digital work permits and temporary SINs that would allow these “virtual immigrants” to start working remotely for their Canadian employers while they wait for the health emergency to abate.

Beyond that, immigration must be a pillar of Canada’s postpandemic economic recovery plan. In November, the federal government is expected to table its next multiyear immigration plan. It should move to make up lost ground by raising the targets for 2022 and beyond. The incremental growth should emphasize economic-class newcomers – those admitted through Express Entry programs, the Provincial Nominee Program, Quebec’s programs, and other federal streams such as the Atlantic Immigration Pilot.

The demographic factors that drive Canada’s need for immigrants have not changed due to COVID-19. Neither, it seems, has public support for immigration. In a Leger poll this summer, respondents agreed by a three-to-one margin that newcomers will help rather than hurt Canada’s long-term economic recovery. The sooner Canada’s immigration system gets back on track, the better.

Goldy Hyder is the president & chief executive officer of Business Council of Canada.

Source: Canada needs to get its stalled immigration system back on track

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →