Who gets to be Metis? As more people self-identify, critics call out opportunists

2017/11/25 Leave a comment

Interesting account of the debates and divisions over Métis identity:

The scent of burning sage lingers in the air as drummers begin a song of welcome. They are traditions dating back centuries, but on this Sunday afternoon the ceremony opens a gathering of one of the country’s youngest Aboriginal groups — the two-year-old Wobtegwa Métis clan.

The meeting, held in a high school auditorium, has brought together members from a corner of Quebec stretching northeast from Montreal past Quebec City and south to the United States border. Some of those present have long known of their Indigenous roots; for others the discovery has come recently. But they have all come together to push for government recognition of their rights.

“This clan is sovereign on its territory,” Yves Cordeau, band chief for the Lac-Mégantic region informs the group.

If the claim comes as news to many in Quebec, it’s because the province’s Métis awakening is recent. Raynald Robichaud, the Wobtegwa’s clan chief, says even members of his own family discouraged him from returning to his Aboriginal roots. “We knew we had a great-grandmother who was aboriginal, but our family absolutely did not want to talk about it, because they were afraid,” he says. “For us now, the fear is gone, and people are coming back.”

Yves Cordeau poses during a break in the meeting for the Wobtegwa aboriginal community, a new Metis group that is trying to attract new members in Sherbrooke, Quebec November 19, 2017.

According to the latest census numbers, make that coming back in droves. Between 2006 and 2016 the number of Métis increased by 51 per cent, with the most pronounced spikes in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Demographers say natural growth explains only a fraction of this increase. “Put simply, more people are newly identifying as Aboriginal on the census,” states Statistics Canada’s report.

Checking a box on a census or connecting to family heritage is one thing. But as groups like the Wobtegwa lay claim to special services and territorial rights — in some cases, the same land as other Aboriginal groups — a backlash to the influx of new Métis is emerging. Some critics question the motivation of those who “become” Métis, and the impact of their activism on more established groups. Others question the right to self-identify at all.

Last month, for example, two professors posted a scathing piece on “self-indigenization,” or “becoming” Indigenous, on the website The Conversation. The “meteoric rise” of Métis in eastern Canada, wrote Darryl Leroux, of St. Mary’s University in Halifax, and Adam Gaudry, of the University of Alberta, is mostly due to white Québécois and Acadians using “long-ago ancestors to reimagine a ‘Métis’ identity.” These new Métis are “deeply invested in the settler status quo,” they added, and could undermine the sovereignty of First Nations in Quebec and the Maritimes.

Leroux, Gaudry and organizations representing western Métis maintain that mixed ancestry alone does not make one Métis. True Métis — as recognized by the Constitution as one of Canada’s three aboriginal groups — must have roots in Manitoba’s historic Red River settlement, they say. That can include Métis all the way west to British Columbia and into Ontario, but not as far east as Quebec and the Maritimes.

Chris Andersen, dean of the University of Alberta faculty of native studies, shares that view. The wave of people identifying as Métis because they have one or two Indigenous ancestors somewhere in their family tree do a disservice to “legitimately Indigenous people” who have been separated from their communities and are trying to reconnect, he says. “Métis identity is not a soup kitchen. It’s not open for people to come whenever they feel some hunger for belonging.”

The impression that Métis identity is there for the taking is in part because of the Supreme Court of Canada. Two key decisions — Powley in 2003 and Daniels in 2016 — were seen to expand the scope of who is considered Métis. Powley, which involved members of a Métis community near Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., established a three-part test to determine Métis status in order to assert Aboriginal rights under the Constitution. The court ruled that one must identify as a Métis person; be a member of a present-day Métis community; and, have ties to a historic Métis community.

After Powley, new Métis groups sprung up in eastern Canada, but so far none have managed to have their Aboriginal rights recognized by a court. The Daniels decision, however, which recognized the Métis as “Indians” to whom the federal government has a fiduciary duty, contained a paragraph that breathed new life into their aspirations.

“There is no consensus on who is considered Métis or a non-status Indian, nor need there be,” the court wrote. “Cultural and ethnic labels do not lend themselves to neat boundaries. ‘Métis’ can refer to the historic Métis community in Manitoba’s Red River Settlement or it can be used as a general term for anyone with mixed European and Aboriginal heritage.” For eastern Métis, proof of the latter is enough. Their organizations typically accept anyone who can provide a genealogical chart showing an Indigenous ancestor.

Denis Gagnon, a professor at Université de Saint-Boniface in Winnipeg and former Canada Research Chair on Métis identity, says those in the west who claim they are “the only real Métis” are hypocritical. They fail to acknowledge how their own ranks have swollen in the last 15 years. “Every day I meet people who have a Métis card but do not have the culture,” he says. “They know a little bit of history. The expression they use is that they are non-practicing. It’s like a religion.”

Undoubtedly, part of the draw of Indigenous identity is the rights and benefits it is seen to confer. The meeting of the Wobtegwa grew lively when discussion turned to which stores accept their membership cards and deduct the provincial sales tax. News that the Wal-Mart in Lac-Mégantic accepts the cards caused a stir, but others reported most other shops yielded no discount. Cordeau explained that members would have to be patient until the federal government or the courts officially recognize their Aboriginal status. And he warned a woman who said she had her new car delivered to a First Nations reserve to avoid paying tax that she could be tracked down for fraud.

Georges Champagne, who says he joined the Wobtegwa because his family has Algonquin roots, has more basic needs than saving money on a new car. He opens his mouth wide to show a discoloured molar. “I’ve got a rotten tooth, but I can’t get it removed because it costs too much,” he says, explaining that his treatment involves putting an aspirin on the tooth to dull the pain. He hopes official recognition by Ottawa will provide dental benefits like those offered to First Nations and Inuit people.

Gagnon acknowledges that some of the people claiming Métis status in Quebec may be opportunists. But in an interview he says he believes others “are proud of their identity of mixed ancestry … and now they are fighting for their rights. It’s legitimate.”

His position is forcefully rejected by St. Mary’s University’s Leroux, who in a September lecture at the Université de Montréal called the existence of a distinct Quebec Métis people “a myth.” He accused Gagnon and other like-minded researchers of “rewriting history” and “creating an Aboriginal identity for a colonizing people.”

In his interview with National Post, Gagnon counters that Leroux is spreading “hatred” toward eastern Métis.

Relations are hardly more cordial between eastern Métis and their First Nations cousins. In Nova Scotia, Greg Burke, chief of the Bras d’Or Lake Métis Nation, says his group’s 250 members and the thousands of other Nova Scotia Métis deserve the same benefits as the province’s Mi’kmaq. He belittles Mi’kmaq reserves as “welfare states” and says Mi’kmaq leaders claim exclusive Aboriginal rights in Nova Scotia because they do not want to share the millions they receive from Ottawa. “This is all about money at the end of the day,” he says.

Some eastern Métis have gone so far as to present themselves as the true descendants of Canada’s first inhabitants.  In a 2007 presentation to Quebec’s Bouchard-Taylor commission, Métis organizations from Gaspé and the Eastern Townships described themselves as “the only direct descendants of Quebec’s First Peoples.” They said “the most miserable” were forced onto reserves, where they succumbed to disease, but the Métis took to the bush and “refused to die on ‘your’ reserves.” It is a message echoed by Cordeau at the Wobtegwa meeting, who describes First Nations people as victims of forced immigration onto reserves. “We decided not to. We are still standing,” he tells the 90 people in attendance.

Ghislain Picard, Assembly of First Nations regional chief for Quebec, is not surprised the census shows more people claiming an Aboriginal identity in this era of reconciliation. “People want to find their identity. It is a very human reflex to want to trace your origins. In that sense it is a good sign,” he says. But he foresees conflict if Métis groups take it further and lay claim to land. “If the territory is claimed by more than one group, it doesn’t help our cause,” he says.

The phenomenon of indigenization is not all about claiming land or seeking tax breaks, of course. In her book Becoming Indian, Circe Sturm examines a similar trend in the United States, where the 2010 census recorded 577,000 more people identifying as Cherokee than there were members of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. What drove this new identification, she found in her interviews, was not economics.

“It’s almost a conversion narrative,” says Strum, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Their life before was empty of meaning. They felt isolated. They felt wrapped up in the modern condition. There is a nostalgic longing for what being tribal means.”

Also important is the “pull of indigeneity,” she says, which can be romanticized by people troubled by the historic mistreatment of Native Americans. “If you look at this settler-colonial history and you look at the dispossession of Indigenous people by white folks, which side do you want to be on? If they have multiple ancestry, they want to claim the side that makes them feel like they have an original relationship with the land and don’t have to be guilty for being here.”

Monique Tremblay came to the Wobtegwa meeting to sign up for a membership card after recently learning from a cousin that she has an Aboriginal ancestor four generations back. She sheepishly admits that as youngsters in Gaspé, she and her friends did not think well of the native people living on a nearby reserve. Today, she says, times have changed. “People think more highly of Aboriginals,” she says, “because we see that there were a lot of things done in the past that were not right.”

via National Post

Filed under Aboriginal Tagged with

If there’s a war on Christmas, it’s being led by the most zealous Christians: Coren

2017/11/25 Leave a comment

Another good and relevant column by Michael Coren on much of the nonsense about a “war against Christmas”:

…. there is not and never has been a war on Christmas, whether it’s the appearance of Happy Holidays cards (so what?), multicultural television commercials (surely a good thing), or carol singers allegedly being banned from shopping malls (they aren’t). But the sausage roll reveals a sorry irony. If there is a religious war, it is not on the season we have somewhat arbitrarily and relatively recently chosen as the date of Jesus’s birth. Rather, it is an attack against the Christian, egalitarian virtues that the child and the event are supposed to epitomize—a charge led by some Christians and churches themselves.

Truth be told, some of the loudest and most active Christians tend to be socially conservative and harsh in their opinions of what is new, novel, and challenging, often obsessed with issues such as abortion and homosexuality. The latter is a subject I myself wrestled with for a long time, and I once accepted—albeit somewhat reluctantly—that same-sex marriage was forbidden in Scripture. A deeper reading of the Bible, however, and a less anachronistic grasp of its meaning, led me to question what I had considered self-evident. I also saw firsthand the love and commitment of so many same-sex couples, often Christian same-sex couples, that must lead God to smile with delight.

We must remember, however, that these are not issues that Jesus explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Yes, he did respond to the Pharisees’ question about divorce by noting that marriage was between a man and a woman, but we also read of his dealings with a Roman centurion and a slave whom the said Roman loves—a romantic love, according to some textual readings. St. Paul does mention homosexuality—a word not used as it is today until the 19th-century—but this is more about heterosexual men using boys than loving, adult relationships. And while some of the stories in the New Testament are certainly up for debate, Jesus’s emphasis on refusing to judge others, especially where sexual sin is concerned, is not.

What is expressed repeatedly in the Gospels, however—with a virtual monomania—is love for neighbour. Christ teaches that authentic devotion to God can only by demonstrated by this love, this fraternal romance, and such a love demands social justice, a passion for the poor and marginalized, and a revolutionary understanding of power and morality. If Jesus does condemn anyone, it is the reactionaries, those who have authority, who obscure love under law, and who disguise the kingdom behind formalities and regulations. Instead of opening the doors wide, they close them and bolt them tight.

I have no doubt that those Christians who complain about the ostensible war on Christmas and have such right-wing attitudes about so many subjects still believe in their religion, and I certainly have no right or ability to look into their souls. But it has all reached a crisis point now, particularly for those of us who embrace a more progressive but nevertheless committed belief in Christianity. Quite frankly, the antics of the Christian right also turn people away from Christianity, and understandably so. If that’s what Jesus is about, some people say, I want nothing of it.

Don’t forget that one of the leaders of the battle against this chimerical war on Christmas, and a powerful leader of North American Christianity, is Franklin Graham, the son of Billy. He believes that Islam is “very evil and wicked,” admires Vladimir Putin, and demanded that LGBTQ people be barred from churches because Satan“wants to devour our homes.” He also claimed that the election of Donald Trump was due to the “hand of God” at work. Imagine putting all that on a card for Santa.

What he and his friends seem to consider as Christmas is the stuff of tinselled nostalgia mingled with the self-prescribed absolute right of Christians to dominate the public square and dictate the private conscience. And if anything should anger followers of Jesus at Christmas time, it shouldn’t be some irrelevant commercial for food, but rather the fact that millions of people go without food altogether; it shouldn’t be that Jesus’s name is taken in vain but that His teachings are taken in vain; it shouldn’t be that we don’t say “Merry Christmas” as often as we did, but that we so seldom say “I forgive you,” “You are loved,” and “All are welcome in church.” After all, per the once-ubiquitous question, “What would Jesus do,” the answer would probably be, “tell everyone to grow up, re-read what the New Testament says, and then go and turn the world upside-down”—not just at Christmas, but every day of the year.

via If there’s a war on Christmas, it’s being led by the most zealous Christians – Macleans.ca

Filed under Religion Tagged with ,

The SRO [police in Toronto schools] program is over. What happens next? Phillip Dwight Morgan

2017/11/25 1 Comment

The activist view:

In 2008, without community consultation, the Toronto District School Board and Toronto Police Service agreed to place police officers in select high schools around the city. The result was a program where some Black and Brown students said they felt targeted, harassed and intimidated, and where some undocumented students reportedly feared for their safety.

Since its inception, the School Resource Officer (SRO) program has faced allegations of racism and discrimination as community members and organizations have questioned how a program that placed police in the schools of largely racialized communities could possibly improve circumstances for youth already being pushed out by academic streaming, increased suspension rates and low teacher expectations. As time passed, the picture became clearer: SROs largely intimidated, harassed and criminalized Black, Brown and Indigenous youth, and allegedly threatened the safety of undocumented students.

That program is now over. At a Nov. 22 meeting, after a six-week review process, trustees from the largest school board in Canada voted overwhelmingly to terminate the program.

Make no mistake: the landmark decision is the result of years of pressure from students, parents, youth workers and concerned citizens. These people repeatedly reminded the board that it was utterly unacceptable to accept Black, Brown, Indigenous and undocumented youth as collateral damage in the push to improve Toronto’s schools. “It is time for school boards across the province and country to acknowledge the ways in which educational policies and practices continue to be shaped by ongoing histories of colonialism and racism,” says Gita Rao Madan, who studied policing in schools for her master’s thesis at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Still, how did a program with such a terrible track record continue for nearly a decade? The sad fact of the matter is that the people most affected by the program were those at the intersection of two deeply oppressive institutions—policing and education—that routinely worked to silence them. Those people, who faced harassment and profiling both inside the classroom and out on the street, had little access to the levers of change.

In response to community concern in the past, the TDSB and TPS had deflected criticism by pointing to so-called “success stories” from the program—accounts of students who loved the baking club being run by Officer Jane or the volleyball team coached by Const. Jim. These are the narratives and images that the TPS and TDSB offered to the public whenever the program faced scrutiny. Now that the program has been terminated, its supporters will likely evoke these images with even greater verve.

But a line of reasoning that asks communities to ignore the experiences of children being pushed out of schools and to instead celebrate the child who loves Officer Jim betrays a failed understanding of the history of community policing in Toronto on the part of those in positions of power. It shows a reluctance to concede that carding, police harassment, intimidation and violence do not stop at the school’s entrance. It is not rooted in equity. Earlier this May, Police Chief Mark Saunders responded to concerns expressed about the program at a Toronto Police Services Board meeting by noting that a 2011 evaluation of the program showed 58 per cent of students felt safer with SROs. In response, TPS Board member Dhun Noria injected an important reminder: “You mentioned, chief, that 58 per cent of the respondents felt safe [with SROs]. This leaves 42 per cent who do not feel safe. Do we have a report about that? Why do they not feel safe and what have we done about that?”

via The SRO program is over. What happens next? – Macleans.ca

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Holocaust-denying prof reinstated at University of Lethbridge – The Canadian Jewish News

2017/11/25 Leave a comment

Questionable decision but appears that investigation ongoing (B’nai Brith appears to have been overly political in their initial reaction compared to CIJA):

The University of Lethbridge has reinstated a professor who had been suspended more than one year ago for questioning the Holocaust and suggesting there was a Zionist connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Anthony Hall, a tenured professor in the university’s globalization studies program, was reinstated following a hearing before a labour arbitrator.

Published reports stated that the university’s board of governors and the faculty association issued a joint statement saying that issues concerning Hall’s activities will be addressed in a faculty handbook.

Contacted by The CJN, the faculty association stated that, “It’s a personnel matter and its confidential.”

Hall was originally suspended in October 2016 over his Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories. At the time, the university issued a statement saying, “From the findings of that assessment, the board has decided to proceed with a complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission against Dr. Hall for publishing statements, alone and in collaboration with others, that could be considered hateful, contemptuous and discriminatory.”

The faculty association contested the suspension and, following a court decision in September, an arbitrator was appointed and a hearing was held earlier this month.

B’nai Brith Canada slammed Hall’s reinstatement and blamed the government of Alberta for passing legislation that brought faculty under the province’s labour-relations laws.

“Premier (Rachel) Notley and her government bear direct responsibility for placing a discredited conspiracy theorist back in a university classroom,” said Michael Mostyn, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada. “We repeatedly warned the government of the likely outcome of its actions, but they sadly chose to ignore our warnings and expose Alberta university students to anti-Semitism and discrimination instead.

“Despite this setback, we expect the University of Lethbridge to continue fighting anti-Semitism on campus, and to do whatever it takes to ensure that Hall has no podium for his unhinged anti-Semitic nonsense.”

In an email cited in a news release by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Premier Notley stated, “There is no question that the views of this individual are repulsive, offensive and not reflective of Alberta. Our classrooms are a place for freedom of speech and expression but that does not mean individuals get to stand at the head of the class and spread lies and conspiracy theories. I am terribly disappointed to learn that this individual has been reinstated, but let me be clear that legislation that our government introduced did not give him his job back. I can confirm that this individual is now under investigation by a committee at the university.”

For its part, CIJA stated that Hall’s reinstatement was “a direct result of an agreement between Hall, the faculty association and the university. We have also confirmed that Hall will not be teaching or interacting with students. He is continuing to be investigated by the university and his future is far from certain.”

via Holocaust-denying prof reinstated at University of Lethbridge – The Canadian Jewish News

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Ottawa library cancels planned screening of controversial ‘Killing Europe’ doc

2017/11/25 Leave a comment

Viewing the trailer, appears to be the right call as it crosses the border into hate speech (Mark Steyn on steroids):

The Ottawa Public Library has cancelled this weekend’s screening of a controversial documentary, Killing Europe, after complaints the film was thinly disguised hate speech against Muslims and immigrants.

“I am letting you know that I have been working with the city solicitor about concerns brought forward by the Ottawa district labour council, unions, residents, board members and friends,” Coun. Tim Tierney, who is chairman of the library’s board of directors, said in an email. “I had asked the CEO to review and address the concerns expressed.”

“I can now report that the rental of the room will not take place.”

The documentary was to have been screened Saturday afternoon at the library’s main branch on Metcalfe Street. The screening was to have been hosted by the group ACT! for Canada, a group dedicated “to speaking out about the clear and present dangers emerging from those who do not embrace Canada’s values …”

Killing Europe, by Danish ex-patriate Michael Hansen, purports to warn of the dangers of the “Islamification” of Europe.

But even a “30-second Google search” by the library would have revealed it to be hate speech, says human rights lawyer Richard Warman, who was one of the people to complain to the library about the screening.

Screening the film is “in clear violation of the library’s own rental policy prohibiting the use of space for discriminatory purposes,” Warman wrote in an email to the library and its board members, Mayor Jim Watson, and others.

“When I looked at the three-minute trailer, it was clear it was going to be an all-out assault on immigrants and the Muslim community,” Warman said Friday.

“The messages contained even in just the trailer is that ‘immigrants are coming to swamp and devastate Europe and that Muslims are engaged in perpetual massacres of the white populations.’ Obviously, it set off alarms.”

Warman received confirmation the screening had been cancelled in an email Friday morning from library deputy CEO Monique Désormeaux.

Coun. Catherine McKenney, another library board member, said Friday she “wholeheartedly” supported the library’s decision to cancel the screening and promised better discussion in the future about what the library chooses to allow.

But where to draw the line between suppressing free speech and stifling hate speech?

Warman said the screening clearly violated the library’s obligations, stated on its website, to not provide public space for individuals or groups that “are likely to promote discrimination, contempt or hatred to any person on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, marital status, family status, sexual preference, or disability, gratuitous sex and violence or denigration of the human condition.”

“As a human rights lawyer, I’m firmly in the camp of defending freedom of expression under Section 2B of the Charter,” Warman said. “The library board is absolutely right to defend freedom of expression, while at the same time complying with their parallel obligation under Ontario human rights law not to discriminate against people on the basis of race and religion.”

In the case of Killing Europe and ACT! for Canada’s own newsletter, which Warman said includes claims of gang rapes and “grotesque caricatures of pakis, blacks and illegals,” there is “no grey area.”

“This is hate propaganda that is clearly directed toward recent immigrants and members of the Muslim community,” he said.

“The main thing is that we ensure public venues aren’t used as amplifiers of the message of hate-mongers … Public, taxpayer-funded facilities cannot be used to engage in hate propaganda. The library board has the obligation, when we know that these groups will attempt to misuse public facilities, that they engage in a sort of rudimentary 30-second Google check: ‘Who are you again? And what’s the movie you want to show?’ The 30-second Google check would have come up with the answers and set off alarm bells.”

ACT! for Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

via Ottawa library cancels planned screening of controversial ‘Killing Europe’ doc | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Can white male CEOs bring diversity to corporate Canada? Interview with Frank Vettese, CEO Deloitte Canada

2017/11/24 Leave a comment

Worth reading:

Q: How long have you been Deloitte’s “chief inclusion officer”? 

A: Almost two years. I’ve been CEO since 2012, prior to that going back to 2006 I co-founded our “women’s initiative.” I have been heavily involved in all things diversity-related at Deloitte. I was executing the CEO role and at same time looking to make deliberate shifts in the organization—from an emphasis on diversity to an emphasis on inclusion. Inclusion really is about creating the conditions for success within the organization within the widest scale. I needed to be the individual setting the tone and the execution plan and linking it to our strategy. Hence, it was an incremental role I took on.

Q: For decades we’ve been hearing white men in powerful positions discuss the value of diversity—and more recently “inclusion.” And yet business remains dominated by white men. The link to Deloitte Canada’s leadership team on your website is broken. But from what I can see, the top three positions are held by white men and only one of six regional managers is a woman. What has Deloitte done, or is it doing, to establish greater diversity/inclusion?

A: In terms of looking at those roles—CEO or chair—you’re correct, they’re men. We’ve got between 20 and 30 per cent of our leadership team as women and 30 and 40 per cent of board as women; I would concur with your point that what we’ve been dealing with, certainly in our organization, and it’s no different than corporate Canada, is a significant under-representation of women and visible minorities and other forms of diversity. We’ve recently appointed our CFO, which you could argue is the third most significant position in the organization, as a female. And when you look at broader leadership team, our vice-chairgroup, we have a number of women within that group.

We’ve had a long track record of hiring at the Canadian representation of our population at the entry level—women, visible minorities, all forms of diverse communities. The challenge has been at the most senior levels and one step back, entry into partnership. To me, this has been the real telling tale of whether the firm is getting this right. In the first few years we were struggling with getting representation  in partnership ranks at Canadian population levels. I’m proud of the last two admission years have approximated the Canadian population—last year 45 percent of new partners were women. We’re still not where we need to be.

Q: Deloitte’s report talks in terms of the need for revolutionary change. Yet as Thomas Kuhn wrote in in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigm shifts rarely happens from within. You are ensconced in corporate Canada. What makes you confident you can create radical change from within?

A: The thing that gives me great confidence is that there is a clear mandate for this. The whole notion about inclusion for our firm is entirely embedded in the strategy of the firm….Go back less than 10 years, and we’d talk about the most significant issue, the topic of inclusion was something that might have come up episodically. Today it is very rare when I go and exchange at the external marketplace that this isn’t at the forefront at least around awareness and recognition of the business case and the moral imperative. I subscribe that there’s a big difference between that and the “how” and “What do we do to get it done?” As we’ve transformed, we’ve engaged our people, our Millennials, Gen X, they have informed what it is we’re doing. We’ve removed hierarchy…They are the ones telling us this is needed for success. I’m confident this has moved from conversation into real action.

Q: On the point of removing hierarchy, you’ve talked about having no formal offices at Deloitte.  So you don’t have an office?

A: I have no office whatsoever; today I’ve probably operated on six or seven floors.

Q: Yet hierarchy is measured in lots of ways in a corporation, mostly by compensation. What are you doing to flatten that out? 

A: A few things. We used to put more of an emphasis on roles, management jobs that had a value assigned to them. Today the measure is very simple: contribution and impact. It’s determined one person at a time; there’s goal-setting. I think that has dramatically changed the way we share the financial rewards and benefits of the firm. We’re working hard at reviewing our compensation policies and approaches to make sure that we’re removing bias, certainly around gender parity but it goes beyond that to ensuring that what people do, functions they perform, impact they drive is being measured in as an objective way as possible. We’re even looking at introducing things like artificial intelligence into our processes to remove bias.

Q: In  your Globe and Mail op-ed you admitted you were guilty in the past of hiring people who looked like you. The report refers to “deep underlying cultural sources of exclusion.” Is that one of them?

A: At time I was launching women’s initiative in 2006, I put in place measures to address the concern, “How do we assure having top talent female managers invited into our partnership?” We saw good progress I stood back after a couple of years and looked at the overall numbers and they moved, but didn’t move as much as I thought. When I went to assess the root cause, we were providing support and tailored development to the people we had. But looking to build the business and fill gaps, I was disproportionately hiring people who had similar attributes to me. It was an unconscious bias I did not identify at the time. And once we  identified it, we could put measures in place. So instead of going to the usual suspects and going to the regular places, how do we change practices to widen the aperture to ensure we look at all qualified candidates?

Q: The report refers to the “diversity industry” which began in the 1960s, noting that diversity training in corporations doesn’t improve diversity. Why not?

A: A lot of the training I made reference to was diversity training—it was awareness of differences, it was spotlighting and putting an emphasis on differences. To some extent, a lot of that training was around representation; the measure of success was the numbers, the fact we were looking at measures of diversity as the outcome. And although diversity is important, and I would say that inclusion without diversity is hollow, the flip is true: diversity in itself does not mean the organization is inclusive. If we’re having certain numbers you’re counting doesn’t mean you are creating a workplace where people can bring their whole selves to work; where there is that flexibility, tailoring to how people operate to thrive and succeed on their own basis. A lot of diversity training has failed because it’s still focused on the need to hit certain targets, as opposed to that underlying culture.

Q: The last of the report’s five “action” recommendations is “Own inclusion inside and outside the office”—meaning to call out inequalities and bias when you see them.  You sit on the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Schulich School of Business, which is 56 men and 15 women. And you sit on the advisory board of Catalyst Canada [a non-profit that promotes advancement of women in the workplace];  it’s composed of 11 men and seven women. Last September, CIBC chief executive Victor Dodig, a white man, replaced Bill Downe, a white man, as the board chair at Catalyst. Don’t you have a responsibility to speak out about inequities on corporate boards? Or do you agree that the board of an organization devoted to promotion of women in business should be headed by white guys?

A: First of all, the CEO of Catalyst is a woman. Victor is someone who at the core represents the ideals and what we’re trying to accomplish. I look at it as “Who is in the best position and most qualified at that time to advance what is core to the strategic objectives of the organization?” I do believe it’s important that we don’t get caught up in the notion that in any way starts to approach tokenism—rather that we look at each unique person and how they align against the needs of the role. Having said that, I’m not trying to dispel the underlying point that you’re making which is, “Are there some things we have to deliberately do and deliberately make to ensure our boards represent the broader constituent group and actually execute against the ideals we espouse?” So our Deloitte Canadian board, for example, when we first set up, it was making sure we could sign up for 30 per cent representation by this year. We’re past that number.

Q: Why a 30 per cent target? Why not 50 per cent?

A: There’s no question that what we hope to achieve in our organization is that we get to the [statistical equivalent of female representation in the] Canadian population in the partner group and in our most senior roles. But in a board situation we don’t simply get, with the stroke of a pen, to construct a board. With our bylaws, we have to have partners who vote. We work through a deliberate process to determine we could achieve 30 per cent. We’re continuing to push boundaries. In our global [Deloitte] board, we had a real deficit in female representation and some of the larger countries had two board seats, one for their sitting chair and one for the CEO. So myself and four other stepped out of our seats years ago and put a top female leaders. Where we have the latitude we’re looking for creative ways to do that. The discourse and effectiveness of our global board has moved up a clear notch.

via Can white male CEOs bring diversity to corporate Canada? – Macleans.ca

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

A vote — from anyone — is a terrible thing to waste: Regg Cohn

2017/11/24 Leave a comment

Good profile by Regg Cohn on the Muslim community’s successful effort to increase political participation and voting (Liberals won a massive majority of the Muslim vote in the 2015):

Every political party gets out the vote on voting day.

Their vote. And only their vote.

GOTV, as it’s called, is an axiom of democracy. And yet the better that parties get at GOTV, the less democratic the turnout tends to be. From one election to the next, a political movement masters the technique or musters the technology to outhustle all rivals on voting day. But do we really want elections decided on the strength of a well-oiled electoral machine rather than a well-honed democratic impulse?

What if we got out the full vote (GOTFV) with a full pull — motivated not by partisanship but participation?

That’s what the Canadian Muslim Vote tried in the last federal election — and plans again for the coming provincial ballot. Mindful that Muslims vote far less than others, the group’s volunteers focused on their own faith group — but without trying to divine anyone’s partisan loyalties.

“We didn’t care who they’d vote for,” said Seher Shafiq, part of the leadership team at the non-partisan, non-profit organization.

As long as they voted for someone. For too long, too many of Canada’s 1.3 million Muslims voted for no one, she told a panel on democratic engagement that I moderated at Ryerson University on the weekend because this issue is crucial for me. Her group tried to understand how Muslim participation in the 2011 election was a mere 35 to 45 per cent in key ridings, compared to the national turnout of 61 per cent.

“We were shocked by this research . . . and we wanted to know why,” Shafiq told a couple of hundred democracy activists at the conference sponsored by Ryerson’s Leadership Lab and the Open Democracy Project.

The reasons were both banal and discouraging; people didn’t know who to vote for, how to vote, how to master the issues, and how to get engaged. In short, how they could make a difference.

Focused mostly on ridings in the Greater Toronto Area — where most volunteers, and most Muslims, happen to live — the group attended hundreds of grassroots events, paid for robocalls, mounted a social media push, and knocked on thousands of doors. Celebrity endorsements were part of the campaign, including Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri.

The bigger stars, however, were influential imams at local mosques. Her group persuaded them to praise the virtues of civic engagement and democracy in their regular sermons.

“For the first time ever, people saw the Muslim community was organizing politically,” she told the audience. “We really felt the buzz.”

It added up to a dramatic increase in the Islamic turnout — 79 per cent in the 2015 election versus 45 per cent in the previous vote, according to public opinion research commissioned by the group. In nine GTA ridings targeted by the group, the Islamic turnout averaged 88 per cent.

The Canadian Muslim Vote doesn’t take full credit for the improvement. Community concerns were bubbling up over perceived anti-Islamic rhetoric after the Stephen Harper government talked about banning religious face coverings, and proposed a “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line.

But I asked Shafiq if lessons learned from the Muslim mobilization could be transferable to other groups in the next provincial election. She is already comparing notes with Black Vote Canada and other organizations that motivate voters.

“Without talking to them — and having people who look like them talk to them — I don’t think they will be as engaged as they could be.”

Fellow panelist Dave Meslin, a grassroots activist trying to reform the electoral system, dismissed traditional GOTV as “a scam” that merely harasses people on election day, with little evidence that it improves democratic outcomes.

“Are we really building these lists (of supporters) to make sure we increase engagement, or are the lists designed to make sure we don’t pull the wrong people — that the Liberals don’t pull Conservatives, that Conservatives don’t pull New Democrats” he asked rhetorically.

Our third panelist, ex-MP and mayoralty candidate Olivia Chow (full disclosure: like me, she is a visiting professor at Ryerson), talked about the power of motivation in democratic engagement. Participatory movements are fine in theory, but a top-down approach may leave the grassroots as unmoved — and unmotivated — as ever.

“We talk about winning hearts and minds, not minds and hearts,” Chow reminded the activists. “Hearts come first.”

But Shafiq won a round of applause when she projected an image onscreen of her grandmother voting for the first time in the 2015 election at age 85. And then came a public confession from Shafiq about herself — the great persuader.

It turns out that she had never taken an interest in politics before she took on the role with the Canadian Muslim Vote. But at the age of 25 she finally joined her 85-year-old grandmother in focusing on the election, figuring out the issues, and making up her own mind.

Because a vote — from anyone, of any persuasion — is a terrible thing to waste.

via A vote — from anyone — is a terrible thing to waste | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Diverse workforce expected by new recruits, drives performance | Business Insurance

2017/11/24 Leave a comment

Insurance industry perspective:

Insurance industry companies seeking to attract young professionals to the sector need to create work environments that welcome diversity or risk losing talent to competitors, a panel of experts said.

In addition, companies that actively promote diversity may perform better financially, they said.

There is a “dawning reality” that corporate culture has fundamentally changed, said Dominic Christian, CEO of Aon U.K. Ltd., a unit of Aon P.L.C. in London.

Young people entering the workforce assume that multiculturalism and gender equality are part of corporate culture, he said, and most executives’ approach to management encourages diversity, he said during a panel session at Business Insurance’s 2017 Women to Watch EMEA Awards and Leadership Conference in London last week.

“The leaders of companies today in corporate life, for the most part, are intensely consensual, they are very open, and openness and receptivity are at the heart of diversity,” Mr. Christian said.

Those companies that don’t promote diversity will lose coveted young employees to rivals, said Harsha V. Agadi, president and CEO of Crawford & Co. in Atlanta.

“These young executives will learn to jump, and there will always be a net,” he said.

To improve diversity in senior positions, companies should focus on their talent “pipelines” to ensure that diversity efforts are sustainable, said Romaney O’Malley, head of U.K. regions and industrials and commercials in Europe for American International Group Inc. in London, and one of Business Insurance’s 2017 Women to Watch.

AIG in Europe has committed to having a pipeline that is composed of 50% women within the next two years, she said.

“That’s really getting at succession planning — and succession planning at all levels,” she said.

FM Global is seeking to increase gender diversity in its talent pipeline, which targets graduate engineers, but in the U.K. only 15% of graduates with degrees in engineering are women, said Angela Kelly, vice president of diversity and international human resources for FM Global in Windsor, England.

To try to improve gender diversity, the insurer established a program with 20 women around the globe appointed as “engineering ambassadors,” with responsibility for working with their business leaders to address the challenge of attracting and developing women engineers. The program, which included networking, mentoring and presenting to senior management, has been in place for two years, and 50% of the women have been promoted into higher-level positions, Ms. Kelly said.

In addition, while historically only 20% to 25% of FM Global’s engineering recruits have been women, last year 50% of the recruits were women, she said.

“I’ve got to think that by putting these formal programs in place, putting some rigor behind it, getting that executive support and buy-in, that’s got to have contributed,” Ms. Kelly said.

As they promote more women to senior positions, companies may need to look outside of their own organizations for mentors for women executives, said Mr. Agadi of Crawford.

“You can promote women, you can have them on the executive committee, but guess what — when they get to the top, you might not be the best mentor for them,” he said.

At another company, Mr. Agadi said he asked the female CEO of another company to mentor an Iranian female executive who was promoted to a senior position based in the southern United States rather than one of her six male colleagues in the U.S.

“If I had her being mentored internally, it would have been a big, big miss,” he said.

Swiss Re Ltd. has a structured program for increasing diversity within the organization, including an active female sponsorship program, with every line manager held accountable for meeting diversity targets, said Frank O’Neill, CEO of U.K. and Ireland for Swiss Re in London.

The benefits of diversity initiatives can sometimes be seen in financial results, he said.

Prior to his current position, Mr. O’Neill ran Swiss Re’s Africa and Middle East business and was based in Cape Town, South Africa. When he took the job in 2012, the executive team was made up exclusively of white males and the business was performing badly. In the next year and a half, he rebuilt the team so it was 60% female, and 60% of those women were women of color, he said. When he left the position last year, revenue had increased 100% and earnings had increased 120%.

“If you build the right team with great talent, you can really drive the business forward,” Mr. O’Neill said.

via Diverse workforce expected by new recruits, drives performance | Business Insurance

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Immigration Minister warns Haitian border-crossers that Canada will probably reject them

2017/11/24 Leave a comment

Latest numbers (and yes, breaking down the numbers by how they entered Canada is relevant given public debates):

With another influx of Haitian refugees from the U.S. in sight, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen is warning that Canada is not a viable option for them — and data released Wednesday by Ottawa backs him up on that.

The federal government has been on high alert since the Trump administration announced this week it will end its temporary residency permit program that has allowed 60,000 Haitians to stay in the United States. Haitian migrants have until July 2019 to return to their country.

On Wednesday, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada released data on the outcomes of the 1,314 asylum decisions made involving those who crossed unguarded points along the border with the United States from February to October. Of those, 941 were accepted and 373 rejected. Some other 258 claims were either abandoned or withdrawn. Almost 12,900 of the 14,470 refugee claims are still pending.

Haitians, who account for 6,304 or 44 per cent of those claims, were among those with the lowest acceptance rate, at 17 per cent. Only 29 of the 168 Haitian border-crossers were granted asylum after a hearing as of Oct. 31.

On Wednesday, Hussen cited the Haitians’ acceptance rate as 10 per cent, using the number of cases “finalized” as the base which included the 130 additional claims that were either abandoned or withdrawn from the system, instead of just the total positive and negative decisions rendered by a refugee judge.

“Coming to Canada first of all has to be done through regular channels, and secondly the asylum system is only for people who are in genuine need of protection,” Hussen told reporters. “It’s not for everyone.”

Critics question the timing of the release of the data as well as the refugee board collection of data by the means asylum-seekers arrived.

“It’s questionable why they are pulling out these claims based on where and how they entered Canada,” said Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees. “The information is not relevant to their claims.”

via Immigration Minister warns Haitian border-crossers that Canada will probably reject them | Toronto Star

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Quebec: Ministère de l’Immigration: la VG dénonce de graves lacunes de gestion

2017/11/24 Leave a comment

Some of these issues not unique to Quebec:

Le Québec a accueilli plus de 500 Syriens l’an dernier, et près de 8000 demandeurs d’asile ont frappé à la porte à la frontière depuis six mois. Au même moment, le ministère de l’Immigration présente de graves lacunes de gestion. La francisation des nouveaux arrivants et leur intégration ne sont pas soumises à des contrôles rigoureux.

Près de 8000 demandeurs d’asile ont frappé à la porte à la frontière depuis six mois.

Dur verdict de la vérificatrice générale, Guylaine Leclerc, qui dépose son rapport de l’automne aujourd’hui à l’Assemblée nationale. Ses observations sur la vente de trois immeubles de la Société immobilière du Québec, en 2007, mobiliseront l’attention des médias. La mission est délicate pour Mme Leclerc qui, comme juricomptable, avait déjà audité le même dossier, avec un mandat de la Société québécoise des infrastructures. Au surplus, l’Unité permanente anticorruption fait déjà enquête dans ce dossier qui touche des responsables du financement du Parti libéral du Québec, William Bartlett et Franco Fava. Mais l’appréciation de la vérificatrice à l’égard des pratiques du ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion (MIDI) nécessitera des correctifs de la part du gouvernement.

Selon les sources de La Presse, la vérificatrice mettra en lumière l’absence de reddition de comptes dans deux volets importants des activités du Ministère, soit l’intégration et la francisation. Le MIDI accorde 16 millions pour l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants, sommes qui transitent par des organismes communautaires.

La reddition de comptes est défaillante en matière d’intégration. Le Ministère négocie avec un organisme parapluie et n’a aucune idée de ce qui se passe sur le terrain.

D’autre part, le Ministère paie la note auprès des établissements d’enseignement pour la francisation des immigrés. Or, dans ces deux volets, le Ministère n’a pas de moyen d’apprécier l’efficacité de ses efforts, il ne peut évaluer la qualité des services rendus ni l’amélioration des compétences en français. Chez Emploi Québec, on relance les prestataires au téléphone trois mois après l’intervention du Ministère pour évaluer son succès. Rien de tel pour les interventions du MIDI, explique-t-on. Il y a déjà eu des visites des fonctionnaires de l’Immigration pour vérifier les activités d’intégration, mais cette pratique est disparue depuis belle lurette.

Sans contact avec leur clientèle, les fonctionnaires du MIDI atteignent des sommets de démotivation, indique-t-on en coulisse – les demandes de mutation des fonctionnaires du MIDI sont nombreuses, situation surprenante puisqu’il s’agit de l’un des rares ministères concentrés à Montréal.

Le gouvernement Couillard, à l’approche des élections, a retrouvé plus d’argent et s’apprête à infirmer deux décisions qui avaient été prises sous Kathleen Weil, à la fin de l’époque Charest. On envisage de rouvrir les bureaux régionaux, fermés en 2013 et 2014, au grand dam des syndicats de fonctionnaires. En outre, on redéploiera des effectifs à l’étranger – on parle d’une trentaine de personnes pour revamper une représentation réduite à sa plus simple expression au cours des dernières années.

via Ministère de l’Immigration: la VG dénonce de graves lacunes de gestion | Denis Lessard | Politique québécoise

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →