Will the Trump era reverse Canada’s brain drain problem?

2025/04/07 Leave a comment

Opportunities:

…The imminent arrival of three eminent Ivy League professors and efforts by Canadian universities to attract American researchers, officials hope, herald the reversal of a perennial problem for Canadian universities: the brain drain to the United States.

“Canada has long wrestled with ways to retain our home-grown talent and attract international academics. Given the developments south of the border, there’s certainly an opportunity now for Canada to build on this. But we’re also competing with other countries,” said David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

“The big obstacle we face is that we’re in a period of serious financial retrenchment in the sector. Inadequate public funding and a sharp drop in international student enrolments due to caps on study visas mean that universities and colleges are suspending enrolments, cutting programmes, freezing new hiring, and even announcing layoffs.

“How to attract new talent when you’re cutting back on people and programmes? We have a climate that is generally supportive of academic freedom, but it’s only one part of the picture of what would make Canada an attractive destination. We also need the federal and provincial governments to urgently address the public funding gap,” said Robinson.

Richard Gold, director of McGill University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and a lawyer, made the same point in an interview with University World News, before adding that to fully benefit from American scientists who come to Canada, Canadian universities and industry will have to drastically step up their game in developing the financial and corporate infrastructure that brings scientific discoveries to market.

“We’ve done really poorly at translating research into companies that make money and stay here. We sell most of our AI intellectual property to Google and others,” he said by way of example. “And then [we] buy it back at a higher price. Now there’s a recognition that we can’t rely on the United States,” he noted.

In 2000, in an effort to fight the brain drain, the Canadian government established the Canada Research Chair programme, which provides funding from an annual budget of CA$311 million (US$217 million) to more than 2,000 university professors.

“Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences.

“They improve our depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthen Canada’s international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of highly skilled people through student supervision, teaching, and the coordination of other researchers’ work,” according to the programme’s website.

Keeping an eye out for Americans

Trump’s policies seem to be a genuine boost to Canada’s chances of attracting those “highly skilled people”.

A recent survey published by Nature showed that 75.3% of 1,608 US respondents said they were “considering leaving the country following the disruptions to science prompted by the Trump administration.

According to Nature, the day an early-career physician-scientist at a major university learnt his NIH grant had been terminated, “he e-mailed the department chair of colleagues at a Canadian university … He and his wife, who is also a scientist, are now interviewing for jobs in the country [Canada] and hope to move by the end of the year.”

As soon as the American administration announced cuts to the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and other agencies, Frédéric Bouchard, Doyen de la Faculté des arts et des sciences at Université de Montréal (U de M), told his 35 department chairs “to keep an eye out for Canadians who began their careers in the United States or non-US citizens who had contemplated offers from the United States that may want to revise their plans either for budgetary or for political reasons – and also for Americans who are reconsidering where they can best pursue their careers”.

Despite budgetary restrictions at U de M, Bouchard told University World News that he expects to hire at least 25 professors this year and that there will be an increase “either of American candidates or international candidates who were considering the US market”.

Though he was unable to provide details, Bouchard said that following the announcement of the NIH grant cuts and US cuts to climate research, several long-time donors to U de M’s science programme approached him “to say that if we needed [financial] help to do strategic hiring, to give them a call”.

Donors to science, he added: “are very interested in the science ecosystem, if you will, because they know that science is international. So at some sort of high level, they always keep an eye out on how the international system is going.

“They see that research is being rattled [by the US cuts] and they know that we’re always building. So I was not surprised that they contacted us, but it was a welcome email”.

Beyond Canada

As Bouchard explained, universities around the world are also making plans to hire professors whose research programmes have been closed by the American cuts or because they do not feel comfortable in the United States.

The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which three years ago saw professors and graduate students leave Ukraine for safety following the Russian full-scale invasion, is among those universities on the lookout.

With funds provided by the Simons Foundation, the mission of which is to support mathematics and basic sciences, KSE is actively looking to hire mathematics and physics professors.

In a posting on X on 29 March, KSE rector Tymofii Brik invited academics who are “feeling uncertain or threatened” to apply to KSE and promised a warm welcome as well as relocation support.

In an interview with University World News, Brik noted that “right now there is a crisis in the United States”, a country he first studied in as a Fulbright Fellow.

“The crisis is political and geopolitical,” he said, noting that Trump’s administration has cut research funds, plans on increasing taxes on endowments, and attacked and cut funds from, among others, Columbia University.

“It seems that a lot of American faculty are frustrated. We hear that Jason Stanley is leaving Yale University because the university is not supporting faculty anymore,” Brik said.

“I think it’s an opportunity for us because despite the war, we are operational,” Brik noted.

“If you really want to be an academic and push science and innovation, Ukraine is about the best place because you have access to data about social activities and demography.

“You have real-time data about how the economy changes during the war. You can have access to data on military issues, so if you are an engineer, you can analyse that.

“Maybe the money is not as great as in the United States. But at least you have a sense of security and academic fulfilment. And you know that you’re fighting for democracy,” he added.

Threats to sovereignty

Dr Marc Ruel, a professor in the department of surgery, and division head and chair of cardiac surgery at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI), earlier this year accepted an offer by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), to become the chief of the division of adult cardiothoracic surgery. Last month, he announced he had changed his mind.

Ruel saw himself, he told the CTV Television Network, as “a bit of a Canadian export” – a reference to Canada’s status as a hockey-mad country, which supplies 42% of the players on American National Hockey League teams, almost 150% more players than the next largest group: Americans themselves.

In an email to University World News, Ruel said he has the “greatest admiration for UCSF and their focus on care excellence, research, education, and innovation” and that his decision to remain in Canada should not be taken as “engag[ing] in their [American] internal politics”.

He told the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail the “tipping point” in his decision to stay was Trump’s talk of making Canada America’s 51st state and the threat of crippling tariffs; by coincidence, he informed UCSF of his change of mind on 4 March, the day that Trump announced tariffs of 25% on Canadian imports.

Ruel told the Globe and Mail the threat to Canada’s “sovereignty and our identity . . . changes everything”.

“I can’t go to a jurisdiction that belittles our country,” he said.

In his email to University World News, Ruel set his decision in the context of international scientific exchange.

“In my view, it’s important for international scientific collaboration and exchange that the sovereignty of partaking countries is not something that is up for grabs or threatened by another.

“If that happens, it’s rather difficult for trust and collaboration to thrive. Science, research, and clinical leaders generally care about how their country – which has educated and supported them – is viewed by the one with which they will closely collaborate or might even move to in order to provide a new stage for their innovation, clinical care, research, or education platform,” he stated.

Patriotic education

While the Trump administration’s attack on Columbia triggered Stanley’s decision to accept the offer to come to Canada, his analysis of the authoritarian nature of American politics includes a trenchant critique of the laws that states like Florida have brought in banning the teaching of critical race theory in the K-12 system.

The vagueness of these laws, he explained to interviewer Michel Martin on Amanpour & Company, was not a bug in the system but, rather, a feature, designed to keep teachers looking over their shoulders because “your fellow citizens have been empowered to report you” for deviating from the “official state ideology”.

The ‘Dear Colleague’ letter issued by the Department of Education that Martin read serves as ‘Exhibit A’ for Stanley’s analysis.

The letter states “that educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon systemic and structural racism and advanced discriminatory policies and practices, and that proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them, particularly during the last four years under the banner of diversity, equity and inclusion, you know, DEI, smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race consciousness into everyday training, programming and discipline”.

‘Exhibit B’ is Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s statement in what she called the “final mission statement of the Department of Education”, which Trump tasked her with dismantling. In that statement, she wrote that the goal of American education is “patriotic education”.

The problem, Stanley underscored, is that the US was “founded and built upon systematic racism and exclusion. It’s part of our founding documents that we wanted to take more indigenous land … The United States is built on slavery. There’s no factual argument about that.

“So when you begin by saying that universities and K-12 schools are not allowed to teach facts, then you’re already on a very problematic playing field.

“And part of the point of these guidelines is to be vague because it allows wide latitude to target professors and to encourage students to report professors for anything that might suggest that the United States was not always the greatest nation on Earth and was essentially free from sin”.

Turning to higher education, Stanley noted: “Universities are not there in a democracy to stroke the egos of the citizens of a country. Just imagine your cartoon vision of an authoritarian country: it’s where the purpose of schools is to tell students to love their country and not question it.

“In a democracy, universities are there to teach the facts. They’re not there to breed patriotism. These documents explicitly tell us the purpose of schools and universities is to create patriotic citizens. That is not the purpose of the university. That’s nationalist education. That is not democratic education.”

Bending to Trump

Stanley is equally critical of American academics and university leaders who, he wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education, have, in a pre-emptive way, acceded to Trump’s threats.

“Let’s keep our heads down and we won’t be seen; we won’t be a target,” he wrote before characterising Columbia’s “obsequious, embarrassing” response as amounting to: “Oh, hit us again, please. Hit us again.”

The Trump administration’s attack on Columbia – the withdrawal of US$400 million in research grants and pressuring the university to place the Department of Middle Eastern Studies into “academic receivership” because the administration objected to its “ideology” – stems, Stanley explained to Martin, from the Trump administration’s equation of “antisemitism” with “leftism”.

Born, Stanley says, in the hothouse atmosphere of Columbia’s campus during the pro-Palestinian encampment last year, which included “a large number of Jewish students” (but during which both Jewish and Palestinian students felt threatened), the equating of antisemitism with leftism has left little room for Jews like Stanley, who is highly critical of Israel but does not “want to take down the State of Israel”.

Trump’s administration, he underscores in this interview, has divided Jews into “good” and “bad” Jews. “And the good Jews are the ones who support Israel’s actions in Gaza, and the bad Jews are the people like me who are highly critical of what is happening and push for Palestinian rights,” he noted.

Worse, Stanley fears that the “history of this era will say that the Jewish people [as defined by Trump] were a sledgehammer for fascism.”

“It’s the first time in my life as an American that I am fearful of our status as equal Americans … because we are suddenly at the centre of politics, of US politics. It’s never good to be in the crosshairs for us; we are being used to destroy democracy,” he told Martin.

Fighting for freedom

Again and again in his essay, in his interview with Martin and on CBC, Stanley stressed his love for the United States.

“They are destroying my country,” he told Martin, referring to the Trump administration. “They are intentionally destroying my country.”

To do this, the destruction of the universities is vital.

“You take down the universities. You tell people that universities are just for job skills.

“They’re not democratic institutions anymore. And then you encourage people not to go to universities. You make student loans more difficult and expensive; privatise them. And then you delegitimise the university,” he stated.

Canada offers him the opportunity to fight the “fascist regime”, he believes, because it is a country “dedicated to freedom, to the values I love”.

Source: Will the Trump era reverse Canada’s brain drain problem?

Filed under Politics Tagged with , , ,

Yakabuski: Le parti de la Charte

2025/04/07 Leave a comment

Right signal on pre-emptive use of the Charter:

…Lorsqu’on lui a demandé si son gouvernement avait l’intention d’intervenir devant la Cour suprême du Canada dans l’éventualité où cette loi se trouverait devant le plus haut tribunal du pays, M. Carney a répondu par l’affirmative. « Mon gouvernement a un malaise avec l’utilisation [préventive] de la “clause nonobstant” », a-t-il affirmé à propos de la disposition de dérogation enchâssée dans la section 33 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. « L’enjeu est [de savoir si] on a des droits ici au Canada ou non. Un droit est un droit. Si on utilise trop souvent la “clause nonobstant” de manière [préventive], on dit qu’on n’a pas de charte des droits ici au Canada. C’est une question pour la Cour suprême. Ce n’est pas plus compliqué que cela. »

Or, la Cour suprême s’apprête déjà à examiner la question du recours préventif à la disposition de dérogation dans le dossier de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État québécois, la loi 21. Cette cause sera entendue bien avant que toute contestation de la loi 96 puisse arriver devant le plus haut tribunal du pays.

S’il s’oppose uniquement à l’utilisation préventive de cette disposition, pourquoi M. Carney souhaite-t-il intervenir dans le dossier de la loi 96 si la question doit être, selon toute probabilité, réglée avant même que la Cour suprême n’accepte d’examiner ce texte législatif ? Est-ce que le chef libéral aurait plutôt sauté sur l’occasion de se prononcer sur la loi 96 afin d’envoyer un signal affirmant qu’il entend défendre la minorité anglophone du Québec ? Lui seul le sait.

Ce qui est toutefois clair, c’est qu’un gouvernement fédéral mené par Mark Carney chercherait à éliminer la capacité des gouvernements provinciaux à recourir préalablement à la disposition de dérogation. Ce n’est pas un détail. Le délai entre l’adoption d’une loi provinciale et le moment où la Cour suprême détermine si elle viole la Charte canadienne des droits peut s’étendre sur plusieurs années. La loi 21 fut adoptée en 2019, et on ne sait toujours pas ce qu’en pense le plus haut tribunal du pays.

En interdisant aux provinces de recourir de manière préventive à la disposition de dérogation, la Cour suprême imposerait une limite fondamentale à la souveraineté des provinces dans leurs champs de compétence. C’est ainsi que le constitutionnaliste Guillaume Rousseau qualifie la proposition de M. Carney de « radicale ». Une loi québécoise « pourrait être suspendue pendant six ou sept ans, en attendant un jugement de la Cour suprême, et ce, même si cette loi vise à régler un problème immédiat », a écrit Me Rousseau dans une chronique publiée cette semaine dans Le Journal de Montréal.

Professeur à l’Université de Sherbrooke, Me Rousseau a été nommé le mois dernier coprésident du nouveau Comité d’étude sur le respect des principes de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État sur les influences religieuses par le gouvernement caquiste. C’est un fervent défenseur de la souveraineté parlementaire du Québec. Il n’en demeure pas moins qu’il soulève une question importante sur la pertinence de la disposition de dérogation si on interdit son utilisation préventive — surtout au Québec, où la suspension d’une loi linguistique pendant plusieurs années (en attendant que la Cour suprême détermine son sort) pourrait avoir une incidence non négligeable sur le déclin du français.

« Nous sommes le parti de la Charte, et nous allons intervenir à la Cour suprême dans les cas qui [pourraient] venir », a déclaré le chef libéral la semaine dernière lorsqu’il a été interrogé pour la première fois sur la loi 96. Qu’on se le tienne pour dit : le Québec a beau être « incroyable » aux yeux de M. Carney, il n’a pas l’intention de le laisser faire.

Source: Le parti de la Charte

… When asked if his government intended to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in the event that the law was before the highest court in the country, Mr. Carney answered in the affirmative. “My government is uncomfortable with the [preventive] use of the ‘notwithstanding clause’,” he said about the exemption provision enshrined in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “The issue is [to know if] we have rights here in Canada or not. A right is a right. If we use the “notwithstanding clause” too often in a [preventive] way, we say that we do not have a charter of rights here in Canada. This is a question for the Supreme Court. It’s not more complicated than that. ”

However, the Supreme Court is already preparing to examine the issue of the preventive recourse to the derogation provision in the file of the Act respecting the secularism of the Quebec State, Bill 21. This case will be heard long before any challenge to Bill 96 can come before the highest court in the country.

If he opposes only the preventive use of this provision, why does Mr. Does Carney wish to intervene in the file of Bill 96 if the matter must, in all likelihood, be settled even before the Supreme Court agrees to examine this legislative text? Would the Liberal leader have rather jumped at the opportunity to vote on Bill 96 in order to send a signal stating that he intends to defend Quebec’s English-speaking minority? Only he knows.

What is clear, however, is that a federal government led by Mark Carney would seek to eliminate the ability of provincial governments to use the waiver provision beforehand. It’s not a detail. The time between the adoption of a provincial law and the time when the Supreme Court determines whether it violates the Canadian Charter of Rights can extend over several years. Law 21 was adopted in 2019, and we still do not know what the highest court in the country thinks of it.

By prohibiting the provinces from making preventive use of the waiver provision, the Supreme Court would impose a fundamental limit on the sovereignty of the provinces in their fields of jurisdiction. This is how the constitutionalist Guillaume Rousseau describes the proposal of Mr. Carney of “radical”. A Quebec law “could be suspended for six or seven years, pending a Supreme Court judgment, even if this law aims to solve an immediate problem,” wrote Me Rousseau in a column published this week in Le Journal de Montréal.

Professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, Me Rousseau was appointed last month as co-chair of the new Study Committee on Respect for the Principles of the Act on the Secularism of the State on Religious Influences by the Caquist Government. He is a fervent defender of Quebec’s parliamentary sovereignty. Nevertheless, it raises an important question about the relevance of the derogation provision if its preventive use is prohibited — especially in Quebec, where the suspension of a language law for several years (pending the Supreme Court’s fate) could have a significant impact on the decline of French.

“We are the Charter party, and we will intervene in the Supreme Court in cases that [may] come,” the Liberal leader said last week when he was first asked about Bill 96. Let’s take it for said: Quebec may be “incredible” in the eyes of Mr. Carney, he has no intention of letting him do it.

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Akbar: Canada’s labour market is failing racialized immigrant women, requiring an urgent policy response

2025/04/07 Leave a comment

Would be helpful to have breakdowns by visible minority groups as they are significant (chart below compares citizens and non-citizens by visible minority group and not visible minority):

…To address these challenges, future research should adopt a problem-solving approach to address the root causes. Simultaneously, a comprehensive policy response is needed to tackle the systemic barriers in the labour market. 

Targeted solutions are needed to help racialized immigrant women. Strengthening credential recognition, for instance, can help employers assess transferable skills across countries. Implementing equitable hiring practices and workplace integration policies are also essential. 

Digital technology and artificial intelligence can also help eliminate bias in hiring and job matching. Settlement programsshould account for the intersecting identities of racialized immigrant women to provide tailored support.

Most importantly, it’s crucial to recognize that ensuring equitable access to meaningful employment is not only vital for advancing gender and racial equity, but also essential for unlocking Canada’s full economic potential.

Source: Canada’s labour market is failing racialized immigrant women, requiring an urgent policy response

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Is Canada’s immigration system actually broken? Here’s how it changed under Justin Trudeau

2025/04/07 Leave a comment

Good overview and series of informative charts:

Canada’s rapid population growth recently has been driven by immigration, which accounted for 97.3 per cent of the 724,586 net growth in the country in 2024.

Since the early 1990s, successive federal governments had maintained a steady immigration level yearly that averaged 0.75 per cent of Canada’s overall population, regardless of the boom-and-bust economic cycle. Skilled immigrants were viewed as an economic stimulant during a recession and as a source of labour supply in time of prosperity.

The number of temporary residents was relatively small. Most international students came primarily to study while foreign workers ebbed and flowed supposedly based on labour needs; those whose time was up had to go home. In the mix were asylum seekers who would become permanent residents if granted protected status. 

Riding the popularity of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways,” the Liberal government welcomed tens of thousands of displaced Syrians and slowly raised the annual immigrant intake to 0.9 per cent of Canada’s overall population in 2019.

After a nosedive in immigration in 2020 — to 0.49 per cent of the population — due to pandemic border closures, Trudeau not only extended the stay of most temporary residents, but opened the door to more in response to skyrocketing job shortages, which reached about a million vacancies….

It didn’t help that Canada’s immigration system over recent years has prioritized the transition of temporary residents in the country, many toiling in lower-skilled jobs, to permanent residents. Instead of picking skilled economic immigrants with high scores in the point selection system, so-called targeted draws were introduced in 2023 to favour candidates with lower scores but who work in an in-demand occupation or are proficient in French.

“We are not selecting the best of the best,” said Planincic. “The intent is to meet labour market needs, but it really muddies the waters, especially when the categories can change at political whims.” 

A better indicator of an immigration candidate’s value to the community and the country, she suggested, is their current earnings, which should be part of the point system….

Immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo attributes much of the system’s chaos to the myriad “ministerial instructions,” temporary directives issued by the minister to address intake, processing, selection, or to create pilot programs.

The extraordinary authority endowed with the minister — introduced in 2008 by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives — has contributed to a patchwork of ad-hoc immigration policies with little transparency.

The ballooning temporary resident population is further fuelled by Canada’s evolving “two-step” permanent residence selection system that favours those already in the country, with Canadian education credentials and work experience. In 2022, 36 per cent of all new permanent residents had previously been in Canada on work permits, up from 19 per cent in 2010 and 33 per cent in 2019.

The population of temporary residents got out of control “because they wanted this mass pool to draw from,” said Bellissimo, adding that immigration officials have been stretched thin handling these student, work and visitor applications, compromising services….

Most people used to look past the struggles of immigrants and focus on the success of their children, but now they expect newcomers themselves to hit the ground running. Paquet said it’s time for Canadians to have a debate about the objectives of immigration.

Immigration had generally been a non-issue in modern Canadian politics because of a consensus that it’s good for the country. Might this federal election be different?

Although Donald Trump and tariffs have dominated the early part of the campaign, immigration has become a major political issue in the last few years of Trudeau’s government.

“How much will the parties talk about it and how much of a central theme will it be?” asked Paquet, research chair in politics of immigration at Concordia. “When a party decides to do that, then that tells us a lot about how the political system is changing.”

Source: Is Canada’s immigration system actually broken? Here’s how it changed under Justin Trudeau

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Trump Immigration Order Could Cost Americans $3,000 Per Baby

2025/04/04 Leave a comment

When the Harper government made a push for ending birthright citizenship, initial analysis included a cost estimate of $300,000 that would be absorbed by the government, not additional fees for those applying (the documents that I received from ATIP did not indicate any cost recovery plans). Given provincial opposition and the smaller numbers known at that time, the government dropped any change to current birthright citizenship.

Much simpler to do in Canada as the previous analysis indicated but like anything in government, always some complications to address:

Ending birthright citizenship would be chaotic and costly for many Americans due to new fees, paperwork requirements and other issues. So far, the constitutionality of Donald Trump’s executive order, which would no longer guarantee a child born on U.S. soil is an American citizen, has dominated the discussion. While critics and supporters of birthright citizenship have highlighted the legal issues, few people have examined the practical effects. Implementing the policy would create significant financial burdens for U.S.-born and immigrant parents. If the Trump administration succeeds in ending birthright citizenship, it will turn each birth in America into a federal event.

The Immigration Order Would Bring The Federal Government Into The Delivery Room

A National Foundation for American Policy analysis finds the Trump administration would impose a $3,000 or higher “birth tax” for each baby born in the United States to carry out the executive order ending birthright citizenship. The cost includes Form N-600, the 14-page Application for Certificate of Citizenship, which has a $1,385 government filing fee, and the attorney fees related to the form that range from $1,500 to $10,000. Parents also would need to submit biometrics to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (or another agency), and the parents and baby would likely need to appear in person at a Social Security Administration office. Those actions could entail additional expenses. Costs could differ based on a parent’s details.

NFAP developed the updated estimates with Margaret Stock, an attorney at Cascadia Cross Border Law Group, who has helped many military families with the time-consuming process of documenting that a child born abroad is a U.S. citizen at birth. Stock authored a 2012 NFAP report that explained why changing the Citizenship Clause would be expensive and burdensome for individuals.

Unless the Trump administration intends their new birthright citizenship policy to operate on the “honor system,” which is unlikely, U.S.-born and foreign-born parents will spend considerable time and money if they want the federal government to certify their newborn is a U.S. citizen…

Practical Problems For Americans If The Government Implements The Immigration Order

Trump officials have not explained the new burdens the executive order would create for Americans or the process they intend to impose on new parents if judges ruled the administration’s new birthright citizenship policy constitutional.

Receiving a birth certificate after a child is born would no longer suffice to prove a baby is a U.S. citizen at birth. At a minimum, new parents would need to endure a process like when starting a new job: “Use Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “All U.S. employers must properly complete Form I-9 for every individual they hire for employment in the United States. On the form, an employee must attest to their employment authorization. The employee must also present their employer with acceptable documents as evidence of identity and employment authorization.”

Margaret Stock believes the process for parents would be more complicated than the current I-9 process companies use to document employment eligibility. “It will have to be much more extensive than the I-9 process,” she said. “Birth certificates showing birth in the United States will no longer prove U.S. citizenship. Someone at the Social Security Administration will need to collect several documents before issuing a Social Security number.”

She said SSA would demand to see a birth certificate with a time stamp on it that shows the time, date and location of birth. The government would also ask for the birth and immigration records of the biological mother and potentially DNA tests to establish the biological father. Officials would also need to see the birth and immigration records of the biological father.

“Only an immigration law expert can do the legal analysis because people’s statuses are a moving target,” according to Stock. “Here’s an example: What if USCIS approves a green card at a Service Center for a pregnant mother a few minutes before (or after) she gives birth? That’s the difference between the baby being a U.S. citizen under the executive order or the baby being an undocumented immigrant.” The Social Security Administration would need an army of expert immigration law adjudicators.

Stock notes that Alaska and Hawaii have federal statutes that do not include the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction.” She believes the executive order may not apply to births in those states.

Today, states, not the federal government, issue birth certificates. SSA relies on state records to issue Social Security numbers to U.S.-born citizens, and the State Department uses those records to issue passports.

“If the fact of someone’s birth within the U.S. is no longer sufficient to prove the person’s claim to U.S. citizenship, all of these bureaucratic systems must be re-tooled,” wrote Stock in the NFAP analysis. “At a minimum, it will require each state to establish a system for verifying claims to U.S. citizenship. More logically, a change to the Citizenship Clause will lead to the creation of a central and authoritative Federal citizenship records system that will register all U.S. citizens—and ultimately, this would likely, in turn, lead to a National Identification card.”

The Trump administration’s effort to end birthright citizenship would add deadweight costs to the economy and financially harm people least likely to possess spare resources. It would also likely create a two-tier caste society with a child’s success in life determined by whether they were born a U.S. citizen at birth.

Margaret Stock said changing birthright citizenship should only appeal to individuals who have not considered the cost and implications of verifying the immigration and citizenship status of every parent of every child born in America.

Source: Trump Immigration Order Could Cost Americans $3,000 Per Baby

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

Does size really matter? Rethinking public service reform

2025/04/04 Leave a comment

Larger public service does not equal improved public services as we have learned from the Trudeau years. That being said, more fundamental examination of program outcomes and efficiencies needed (e.g., program review exercise), but size and high growth rates are proxies that most people understand:

…Interestingly, neither Carney’s nor Poilievre’s perspectives acknowledge that higher program spending and larger headcounts has not led to significant improvement in public service delivery, as shown by a recent analysis by Jennifer Robson, one of our co-authors. 

This is a critical point. The effectiveness of public services cannot be accurately assessed by size alone. The simplistic equation of a larger public service with inefficiency, or a smaller one with effectiveness, ignores the complexities inherent in governance. 

Effective public service requires a nuanced approach that considers not just the quantity of personnel but also the quality of services provided, the efficiency of processes and the outcomes for citizens. 

While the Trudeau government expanded the public service, this did not necessarily translate into improved services. As Robson points out, this discrepancy suggests that merely increasing or decreasing staff numbers is not a panacea for the challenges facing public administration.  

The focus, therefore, should shift from a binary debate over size to a more comprehensive discussion about efficacy. 

This includes examining how public services are designed and implemented, how they adapt to changing societal needs and how they can be reformed to better serve the public without necessarily expanding or contracting the workforce arbitrarily. 

Such a perspective moves beyond partisan talking points and addresses the real issue: delivering high-quality public services that meet the needs of Canadians efficiently and effectively. 

This perspective would also better reflect nuanced public opinion. Concerns about government spending do not necessarily translate into support for across-the-board cuts. Instead, Canadians prioritize investment in essential services. 

This is not just a debate about numbers on a balance sheet. It is a battle over the role of government itself. 

By reducing it to a question of ideological alignment – big government versus small government, or populists versus bureaucrats – politicians risk weakening institutional legitimacy and public trust. 

This also diverts discourse and resources away from the core issues affecting public service efficacy, including procedural barriers, resource constraints, and training and talent management.  

Framing this debate as being over size makes for a slippery slope toward the deeply entrenched partisanship evident in the U.S. and toward an erosion of public trust in the public service. 

Canada now faces a defining question: Will we follow the U.S. in politicizing public institutions? Or will we maintain a commitment to evidence-based, professional and accountable governance? The answer will shape the future of Canada’s public sector – and the country’s political landscape – for years.  

Source: Does size really matter? Rethinking public service reform

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Nicolas: Mode survie

2025/04/04 Leave a comment

Realism:

…Remarquez, je ne cherche pas ici à encenser ou à critiquer les limites du phénomène, je cherche plutôt à le comprendre. Visiblement, les Canadiens rejoignent maintenant les Américains, les Français et les Allemands parmi les peuples qui ont, dans la dernière année, appréhendé les options politiques qu’on leur présente à partir de leur instinct de survie.

Je ne vois pas comment analyser autrement l’effondrement des appuis néodémocrates, alors que les libéraux se repositionnent vers la droite, ou les difficultés du Bloc québécois devant un leader libéral dont le français reste parfois laborieux. Il ne s’agit pas ici d’un amour particulier pour Mark Carney, mais d’un mouvement ABC (Anything But Conservative, n’importe qui sauf les conservateurs) qui n’a pas de leader, pas d’organisation, qui ne dit pas son nom, mais qui semble d’une efficacité historique pour centraliser les intentions de vote… j’allais dire progressistes, mais entendons-nous pour « non conservatrices », au pays.

Même lorsque Poilievre ne parle pas de Trump et se drape du drapeau canadien, certains des thèmes que les conservateurs choisissent d’évoquer, du fentanyl aux wokes en passant par le « il n’y a que deux genres », rappellent nécessairement les discours de Trump. Et si ce ne sont pas les thèmes, alors il y a la manière hyperpartisane, abrasive envers les adversaires, ou encore contrôlante envers les journalistes, qui évoque nécessairement Donald Trump pour une partie de l’électorat canadien. Une partie de la peur populaire de Trump se déploie en peur d’un gouvernement de Pierre Poilievre. Le mouvement ABC se nourrit d’une inquiétude plus existentielle qu’à l’habitude.

Ce qu’il faut comprendre du mode survie, c’est qu’il permet… de survivre. Un modèle classique en psychologie (qui a ses limites, comme tous les modèles) est celui de la pyramide des besoins de Maslow. Tout à la base de la pyramide, il y a les besoins physiologiques (faim, soif, sommeil), puis ceux de sécurité (l’accès à un environnement stable et prévisible, sans crise à appréhender). Ensuite vient l’appartenance (le sentiment de faire partie d’un groupe), l’estime de soi (la confiance, le respect, la reconnaissance) et l’auto-actualisation (l’accès à la liberté et à l’espace créatif pour devenir la meilleure version de soi-même).

Sans établir un lien trop direct entre les besoins individuels et les dynamiques sociétales, on peut constater qu’un électorat qui opte pour la survie aura tendance à agir en fonction de ses besoins de base (le coût de l’épicerie, la capacité à se loger) et de son besoin de sécurité et de stabilité malgré la multiplication des crises. Lorsque Jagmeet Singh interpelle les électeurs progressistes en fonction de leurs valeurs communes ou qu’Yves-François Blanchet parle du refus de Mark Carney de participer au Face-à-Face de TVA comme d’un manque de respect envers les Québécois, ils font appel à des notions qui se trouvent plus loin dans la liste de priorités des gens. Certainement trop loin pour des gens qui cherchent à survivre.

Même les questionnements éthiques soulevés par certains éléments de la carrière de Mark Carney dans le milieu des affaires n’arrivent pas vraiment à retenir de manière significative l’attention des gens. Donald Trump veut détruire l’économie canadienne, la déstabilisation géopolitique s’accélère : une bonne partie de la population n’a pas accès à l’espace mental dont elle dispose habituellement pour ce genre d’actualité.

Autant s’aligner sur la survie permet parfois une forme de recentrage sur ce qui est le plus important dans nos vies, et nous permet d’apprécier sous un œil nouveau une partie de notre quotidien que l’on tenait pour acquise, autant cette stratégie annonce déjà une forme de rétrécissement de l’espace de délibération démocratique.

Personne n’est au mieux avec la stratégie de la survie. Il n’est pas question d’épanouissement, mais de faire des choix pour éviter le pire. Les critiques inefficaces, ou plutôt l’absence d’espace cognitif pour les critiques envers Mark Carney, m’apparaissent comme un symptôme d’un Canada qui s’en remet à son instinct de survie.

Si « le pire » est évité, j’espère qu’on retrouvera la capacité à aspirer au meilleur. Après avoir « choisi ses conditions de résistance », il faut après tout ne pas oublier de résister.

Source: Mode survie

… Notice, I am not trying here to praise or criticize the limits of the phenomenon, I am rather trying to understand it. Apparently, Canadians are now joining the Americans, the French and the Germans among the peoples who, in the last year, have apprehended the political options presented to them from their survival instinct.

I do not see how else to analyze the collapse of New Democratic support, while the Liberals are repositioning themselves to the right, or the difficulties of the Bloc Québécois in front of a liberal leader whose French sometimes remains laborious. This is not a particular love for Mark Carney, but an ABC (Anything But Conservative) movement that has no leader, no organization, that does not say its name, but which seems to be historically effective in centralizing voting intentions… I was going to say progressive, but let’s mean “non-conservative”, in the country.

Even when Poilievre does not talk about Trump and drapes himself with the Canadian flag, some of the themes that conservatives choose to evoke, from fentanyl to wokes to “there are only two genders”, necessarily recall Trump’s speeches. And if these are not the themes, then there is the hyperpartisan way, abrasive towards opponents, or controlling towards journalists, which necessarily evokes Donald Trump for part of the Canadian electorate. Part of Trump’s popular fear is unfolding in fear of a Pierre Poilievre government. The ABC movement feeds on a more existential concern than usual.

What must be understood about the survival mode is that it allows… to survive. A classic model in psychology (which has its limits, like all models) is that of Maslow’s pyramid of needs. At the very base of the pyramid, there are physiological needs (hunger, thirst, sleep), then those of security (access to a stable and predictable environment, without crisis to apprehend). Then comes belonging (the feeling of being part of a group), self-esteem (trust, respect, recognition) and self-actualization (access to freedom and creative space to become the best version of oneself).

Without establishing too direct a link between individual needs and societal dynamics, we can see that an electorate that opts for survival will tend to act according to its basic needs (the cost of groceries, the ability to house) and its need for security and stability despite the multiplication of crises. When Jagmeet Singh challenges progressive voters based on their common values or Yves-François Blanchet speaks of Mark Carney’s refusal to participate in the TVA Face-to-Face as a lack of respect for Quebecers, they use concepts that are further in the people’s list of priorities. Certainly too far for people looking to survive.

Even the ethical questions raised by some elements of Mark Carney’s career in the business world do not really manage to hold people’s attention in a significant way. Donald Trump wants to destroy the Canadian economy, geopolitical destabilization is accelerating: a good part of the population does not have access to the mental space it usually has for this kind of news.

As much as aligning ourselves with survival sometimes allows a form of refocusing on what is most important in our lives, and allows us to appreciate with a new eye a part of our daily life that we took for granted, this strategy already announces a form of narrowing of the space of democratic deliberation.

No one is at their best with the strategy of survival. It is not a question of fulfillment, but of making choices to avoid the worst. Ineffective criticism, or rather the lack of cognitive space for criticism of Mark Carney, appear to me to be a symptom of a Canada that relies on its survival instinct.

If “the worst” is avoided, I hope that we will regain the ability to aspire to the best. After “choosing your conditions of resistance”, you must after all not forget to resist.

Filed under Election 2025, Politics Tagged with

Todd: In Canada, ‘housing nationalism’ shouldn’t be an epithet

2025/04/04 Leave a comment

Important reminder and lesson:

…The story of this type of Canadian nationalism, which aims to make it possible for young, working Canadians to have a chance at affordable housing, is spelled out in a new study by B.C. housing experts Joshua Gordon, David Ley and Andy Yan. 

Gordon is with the digital society lab at McMaster University, Ley is author of Housing Booms in Gateway Cities and Yan is director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program.

They rebut big players in the Canadian development industry and their allies, whom they dub the “growth machine.”

These powerful forces are often guilty of “playing the race card” as an “ideological tactic” to stop the public from realizing how offshore capital and wealthy immigrants have contributed to astronomical house prices in Canada, say the authors.

The trio’s paper, Crafting the Narrative: Wealth migration, growth machines and the politics of housing affordability in Vancouver, is published in The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. It is a direct response to a 2023 article by two prominent B.C. researchers that was published in the same journal.

In their article, University of B.C. professor Nathanael Lauster and Vancouver statistician Jens von Bergmann defended investment of offshore capital in Canadian housing, arguing that opposition to the phenomenon is a baseless “moral panic” in the guise of “housing nationalism,” a movement they deem to be a “hammer in search of nails.”

Lauster and von Bergmann argued in their 2023 paper, which echoed the views of many in the development industry, that such economic nationalism “blames and penalizes the foreign” and, specifically, is “anti-Chinese.”

In addition to their high profiles as commentators in the media, Lauster and von Bergmann were key players in the legal attempt to force the repeal of B.C.’s foreign-buyers tax, which failed. B.C. Appeal Court judges concluded in 2019 the tax didn’t promote racism or reinforce “racial stereotypes” about people from Asia.

The new paper by Gordon, Ley and Yan compiles data showing foreign capital has indeed been a dramatic factor in raising B.C. housing values, a fact they say is often “celebrated behind closed doors by the real estate industry.”

Their paper frequently quotes business speeches by Vancouver condo marketer Bob Rennie, including when he told an audience of developers that buyers from Mainland China were at one point responsible for 90 per cent of the homes sold for more than $2 million on the west side of Vancouver.

The tremendous volume of high-end housing purchases by non-Canadians was confirmed in a 2015 study by Yan. This new paper provides further context. It notes how what was happening to Metro Vancouver was also occurring at the same time in the U.S., which, unlike Canada, keeps track of foreign investment in property.

The U.S., between 2015 and 2018, experienced a six-times surge in the volume of housing purchases made by buyers from China. The multi-billions of dollars were much more geographically spread around than in Canada, however, where the money was concentrated in Vancouver and Toronto.

While acknowledging that some people can indeed be xenophobic, Gordon, Ley and Yan say there is no evidence of that in regard to opposition to excessive foreign capital in Canadian housing. Polls, they say, show popular resistance to these global flows of capital came from across ethnic groups, including people of Chinese ancestry.

The scholars also provide evidence that B.C. residents’ grassroots opposition to “foreign ownership” — a term in which they include “satellite families” who earn most of their money outside of the country, where it’s not subject to Canadian taxation — has come largely from centrist and left-wing people.

They explain how B.C.’s foreign-buyers tax, and the speculation and vacancy tax, have been moderately successful in curbing house-price inflation.

Before the two taxes were introduced in 2016 and 2018 the west side of Vancouver had seen detached house prices jump by 67 per cent between 2014 and 2016. Prices in the same two-year period spiked by a “remarkable” 84 per cent in Richmond.

After the two taxes came into effect, the price of houses in the same parts of the city, which had drawn the most interest from foreign buyers and rich investor immigrants, fell by about one-fifth.

Reflecting on political philosophy, the authors take exception to Lauster and von Bergmann’s claim that opposition to such price jumps came from “reactionaries,” a term normally used to describe right-wing people who oppose progress or reform.

Their article says protective policies like the foreign buyers and speculation taxes have instead had “egalitarian effects, generating tax revenue from landowners, property developers and wealthy buyers that helped support government spending on lower-income individuals, including affordable housing.”

The authors, including Ley, a UBC geography professor emeritus who this week publicly endorsed the candidacy of TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick in Vancouver’s April 5 byelection, recommend a novel idea for governments to go further in limiting foreign wealth in B.C. housing.

“More aggressive action is possible,” they say, “such as property surtaxes that can be offset by income tax paid, with exemptions for seniors, which would more comprehensively tax foreign-capital-based home ownership.”

The authors readily acknowledge the “growth machine” opposes such policy ideas: It would rather continue to “instrumentalize charges of racism to support neo-liberal agendas” and maximize profits.

The trouble, suggest the authors, is that such name-calling taints legitimate debate about housing and the nature of healthy nationalism.

Source: In Canada, ‘housing nationalism’ shouldn’t be an epithet

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Immigrants and visible minorities also have biases, national poll finds

2025/04/03 Leave a comment

No real surprise here, people are people, same pattern has existed even before my time at the multiculturalism program, many years ago under the Harper government:

Immigrants and visible minorities have negative views of other groups in Canada at similar, and sometimes higher, rates as the general Canadian population, a new survey has found.

The poll by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies challenges the conventional view that prejudice in Canada follows a simple “majority vs. minority” pattern, revealing that negative sentiment is more widespread and complex. The survey, which was conducted ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, suggests that prejudice exists across multiple demographic groups and varies by factors such as age, language and immigration status.

Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies, says these results challenge how policy-makers and the public discuss discrimination.

“Too often, we assume that those who experience prejudice do not express it themselves, but the data show a more complicated reality,” he said. “If we truly want to address discrimination, we need to move beyond the idea that prejudice is always about a dominant majority versus a marginalized minority.”

The survey found that overall, Arab Canadians face the highest levels of negative sentiment, with 26 per cent of respondents reporting unfavourable views of them. Black Canadians were viewed the least negatively at 11 per cent, while 14 per cent expressed negative views of Jewish and Indigenous Canadians, and 15 per cent for Chinese Canadians.

The results also highlight that while racial and religious minorities continue to be the primary targets of prejudice, negative sentiment is not limited to one group expressing bias toward another. It is expressed across multiple ethnic and racial groups.

Twenty-two per cent of visible minorities and 20 per cent of immigrants held negative views of Jewish Canadians, compared to 11 per cent of “not visible minorities” and 12 per cent of non-immigrants.

Seventeen per cent of visible minorities and 15 per cent of immigrants expressed negative views of Indigenous people, compared to 14 per cent each for not visible minorities and non-immigrants.

For Black people, 19 per cent of visible minorities and 16 per cent of immigrants expressed negative views, compared to nine per cent of not visible minorities and 10 per cent of non-immigrants.

Chinese people were viewed negatively by 19 per cent each of visible minorities and immigrants, compared to 11 per cent of not visible minorities and 14 per cent of non-immigrants.

Arabs were the only group viewed similarly by the four categories. For immigrants and not visible minorities, 27 per cent had unfavourable views and it was one per cent lower for not immigrants and visible minorities.

Additionally, 26 per cent of South Asians held negative views of Arabs, while the same percentage of Arabs expressed negative views of South Asians.

Jedwab said these findings demonstrate that prejudice is not limited to one group targeting another, but rather exists in complex, intersecting ways across Canadian society.

“Social tensions are often framed as ‘them vs. us,’ assuming that people instinctively know who ‘them’ and ‘us’ refer to,” he said. “But the reality is much more complicated.”

The study also examined views on religion and found Islam is viewed significantly more negatively than Christianity and Judaism. Nearly half of respondents (49 per cent) reported a negative view of Islam, compared to 27 per cent for Christianity and 25 per cent for Judaism.

The study found a strong link between religious prejudice and ethnic bias.

A majority of Canadians who hold very negative views of Islam also hold negative views of Arab Canadians (62 per cent). The same is true for Jews. Of those who hold very negative views of the religion, 65 per cent have negative views of Jews.

Jedwab warned that if policymakers and institutions continue relying on outdated assumptions about prejudice, efforts to promote equity and inclusion may be ineffective.

“As we grow more diverse, our approach to inclusion must also evolve,” he said. “Otherwise, terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’ risk becoming empty slogans rather than meaningful commitments to social progress.

The online Leger poll surveyed 1,539 Canadians on March 1 and 2. A margin of error cannot be calculated for an online poll, but a probability sample of this size would yield a margin of error plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Source: Immigrants and visible minorities also have biases, national poll finds

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Trump threats open ‘floodgate’ of inquiries from U.S. physicians about moving north

2025/04/03 Leave a comment

“Floodgate” might be an exaggeration in a macro sense but still notable:

…Concerns over the political climate in the U.S. has opened a “floodgate” of inquiries about moving to Canada, according to recruiter Michelle Flynn. 

“The amount of interest has more than doubled over the last several months,” she told CBC. 

The COO of CanAm Physician Recruiting Inc., Flynn recruits U.S.-trained physicians to work in Canada and places Canadian specialists in roles in the U.S.

Lately though, she has struggled to get any Canadians interested in moving south. 

“I started a position for an [obstetrician-gynecologist] in the U.S. before President Trump was elected,” she said. “We since have had to scrap that idea totally. Nobody is going to the U.S.”

To deal with the influx of inquiries from American physicians wanting to come to Canada, Flynn said she is now conducting interviews five days a week, up from three days a week previously. 

“We’re getting 60-plus physicians coming to and registering on our website a month,” she said. 

Source: Trump threats open ‘floodgate’ of inquiries from U.S. physicians about moving north

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