Alberta tables bill to add citizenship mark, health-care numbers to driver’s licences

2025/11/19 Leave a comment

The post 9/11 enhanced drivers licences issued by some provinces included citizenship but were all discontinued by 2019. NEXUS has largely replaced the need. Alberta’s inclusion of citizenship markers will not, of course, be accepted by US authorities:

Alberta’s government has tabled legislation to add health-care numbers and mandatory citizenship markers to driver’s licences and identification cards.

The government had announced its plans to do so earlier this year, leading critics to say the province was creating privacy concerns rather than protecting against them. 

Critics at the time said someone’s citizenship status would become known in unnecessary situations, such as purchasing alcohol.

Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally told reporters Monday that having citizenship markers on driver’s licences and other forms of identification is only meant to streamline access to services.

“When you’re applying for future benefits from the government of Alberta, it’s going to make it easier for you because you’re not going to have to produce a birth certificate. It’s going to be on your driver’s licence,” said Nally.

“Let’s be clear, that’s what this is about. This is about making it easier for Albertans to access services.”

Nally, and Premier Danielle Smith, had previously said adding citizenship markers — which will read “CAN” — to licences and ID cards was also about preventing election fraud and routing out potentially fake health-care numbers, but the minister didn’t mention either concern on Monday….

Source: Alberta tables bill to add citizenship mark, health-care numbers to driver’s licences

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Parkin: The limited prospects for a “rebel alliance”

2025/10/28 Leave a comment

More interesting analysis by Parkin and Environics, written in response to the Globe editorial. Main takeaway, problem appears to be more on the Alberta side in terms of resentment:

The Globe and Mail published a special editorial this Sunday on the alliance between the Quebec and Alberta governments in support of greater respect and autonomy for their provinces. You can read it here. 

I am going to weigh in. What’s the point of having a Substack if you can’t drop everything you had planned for the morning in order to share some charts?

The editorial, on the whole, is not wrong. Quebecers and Albertans share many frustrations. Our survey confirms they are the two provinces where support for more provincial powers is highest. But there are two specific nuances that are worth noting, since they arguably constrain the prospects for any Quebec-Alberta “rebel alliance.”

The first is one of the findings that jumped out early on in the Confederation of Tomorrow survey project. Quebecers who are critical of federalism are more likely than those who are not to support an asymmetrical distribution of powers (the option in the survey is: “the federal government should offer more powers to those provinces that want them, so that the federal system can respond to the different needs that some provinces may have”). But this is not the case in Alberta, where more insist on the equality of provinces: there is no greater openness to asymmetry among disgruntled Albertans. While many Quebecers and Albertans will find common ground in feeling disrespected within Canada, their solutions are not the same: the asymmetry that represents a step forward for autonomist Quebecers actually represents a step backwards for autonomist Albertans….

The second finding comes from a question added to the survey more recently, about the perceived contribution that the people in each of the country’s major regions make to Canada.

Relatively few Quebecers (12% overall) say that western Canadians contribute less than their fair share to Canada, and the proportion that holds this view is only slightly higher (16%) among Quebecers who don’t feel their province is treated with respect. 

Far more Albertans (54%) say that Quebecers contribute less than their fair share to Canada, and this rises to a striking 81 percent among Albertans who don’t feel their province is treated with respect….

In short, whatever it is that annoys some Quebecers about federalism, it’s not their sense of what’s going on in the west. But one of the things that annoys some Albertans about federalism is precisely their sense of what’s going on in Quebec.

Resentment of Quebec (among other things) continues to fuel western alienation. The potential for a meaningful Quebec-Alberta alliance that leads us to a reformed federation, along the lines discussed in The Globe and Mail’s editorial, will be limited until Albertan leaders try to address and even defuse that resentment. 

Source: The limited prospects for a “rebel alliance”

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Plan to accept newcomer parents and grandparents will strain health services, Alberta warns

2025/07/26 Leave a comment

Parents and grandparents applications always over subscribed. Suspect some, if not many, of immigrant origin Albertans are interested in sponsoring their family members. But of course, from a demographic perspective, parents and grandparents only increase average age, not decrease it:

Alberta’s immigration minister says he’s concerned about the federal government’s plan this year to accept thousands of parents and grandparents of immigrants already in Canada.

Joseph Schow responded Tuesday to a federal notice that Ottawa plans to take in 10,000 applications from those who have previously expressed interest in sponsoring family members.

Schow took issue with the 10,000 figure.

In a statement, Schow said provincial health-care systems, housing and social services don’t have the capacity and could be overwhelmed.

Federal Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s office said the federal government’s actual countrywide target for approvals this year for the parent and grandparent immigration stream is higher at 24,500.

Diab’s office said Schow was responding to a notice that the ministry is preparing to take in 10,000 applications for consideration from already settled immigrants who expressed interest in 2020 in sponsoring their parents or grandparents.

“Family reunification is an important part of Canada’s immigration system, helping Canadian citizens and permanent residents sponsor their loved ones to live and work alongside them in Canada,” a spokesperson for Diab said in an email, adding that the federal government is committed to reuniting as many families as possible.

“Opening intake for 10,000 applications will help us meet this commitment and will not increase the target.”

Schow’s office said it was under the impression the 10,000 was the 2025 target, and his concern remains the same.

‘Disproportionate strain’

Schow said in the Tuesday statement that he understands “the importance of family reunification, [but] inviting large numbers of parents and grandparents into the country without proper co-ordination with provinces places disproportionate strain on already busy health systems.”

“This creates serious concerns for both Albertans and the newcomers themselves, who may not receive timely care if our system is overwhelmed.”

The minister didn’t directly answer questions about whether he wants to see the parent and grandparent target reduced or eliminated. In an email, he said the “root issue” is the federal government setting immigration targets without provincial input.

“The more direct concern with this program is its impact on health care,” Schow added….

Source: Plan to accept newcomer parents and grandparents will strain health services, Alberta warns

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Newcomers vs. born-and-raised Albertans: Turns out, they’re not all that different

2025/07/10 Leave a comment

Would be interesting to also have data contrasting political affiliation to see if same pattern holds (it may well). Measure of political integration:

….Conservatives have long fretted that international and interprovincial migrants will bring with them a tidal wave of views — and votes — at odds with traditional, right-leaning Alberta values. Some progressives, meanwhile, have been wishing and hoping for the day that happens.

So far, it hasn’t.

And it likely won’t, says pollster Janet Brown, even with the latest wave of people moving to the province.

“It’s a widely held belief that newer Albertans are different, but the data has never borne that out,” said Brown, who recently conducted a wide-ranging survey for CBC News that examined the beliefs and perspectives of people in this province.

The results were in line with polls she had done in years past; overall, Brown has found very little difference in opinion between Albertans who have lived all or most of their lives in the province and those who have moved here from elsewhere.

When it comes to many beliefs, in fact, the two groups are virtually indistinguishable.

Value statements

This most recent poll asked Albertans whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of value statements on a range of topics and issues.

You can see for yourself in the chart below just how similar the responses were.

Albertans who have always or mostly lived in the province are seen in the left-hand column, while Albertans who moved here from elsewhere are in the right-hand column.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/wuJvs/1/

These results may come as a surprise to many Albertans, but not Brown.

As a pollster, she says the lack of difference between these two groups has been apparent for some time, even if others didn’t believe it.

“In the past I’d have liberal friends and they’d say, ‘Well, if we just wait for enough people to move from Ontario, then Alberta will become liberal,'” Brown said.

That has yet to materialize, she said, because “the people who move from Ontario aren’t a random, representative sample of people who live there.”

“Sometimes we find that new Albertans are more stereotypical than people who were born here,” Brown said.

Search: Newcomers vs. born-and-raised Albertans: Turns out, they’re not all that different

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Minister preemptively shuts down Calgary proposal to let permanent residents vote

2024/04/18 Leave a comment

Right call, given that Canadian citizenship has reasonable requirements (high fees perhaps excepted) and that backlogs largely eliminated:

A Calgary city council motion to extend municipal voting rights to permanent residents has been stopped in its tracks by Alberta’s municipal affairs minister.

The motion is set to be introduced by councillors Walcott, Wong, Dhaliwal, Mian, and Penner on Tuesday.

However, in a post to X on Saturday, Minister Ric McIver said he’ll “save us all some time.”

“Only citizens of Canada can vote in municipal elections. That will not be changing,” he said.

The motion calls for an amendment to the Local Authorities Election Act, which determines who has the right to vote in municipal elections. 

Because municipalities exist due to provincial legislation, the Alberta government would have to decide to amend the Local Authorities Election Act.

The councillors argued in their motion that all levels of government make decisions that affect residents’ daily lives, regardless of their citizenship status. 

“Municipalities are unique, as the only order of government that is not constitutionally defined. The opportunity to extend voting rights to more members of our local communities would represent a significant shift to ensure our local communities are representative of the people who call them home,” reads the motion.

The procedure on Tuesday is to ensure that the motion is written properly, Wong told True North in an interview. The motion will not be debated until the next regular council meeting on Apr. 30.

Wong said he is eager to hear more about the pros and cons of the motion, including its virtues and benefits, and how it aligns with federal and provincial criteria for voting eligibility

“Our responsibility as municipalities extends to all… who call our communities home, who contribute to civic life, who work here, raise families here, and use city services, should have a democratic right to vote in our municipalities,” reads the motion.

Wong said that councillors have been canvassing their constituents, both citizens and permanent residents.  

The perspectives presented have been varying. Some have said that citizenship is a vital voting criterion.

“We’ve also heard people saying, ‘We’re newcomers. We want to be able to be a citizen.’ There are reasons why it’s been delayed, whether it’s in their control or not. But they also feel that they’d like to have a voice in municipal governance because they are users of our services as well as people who pay taxes,” said Wong.

He added that one of the most pressing questions is the many different types of permanent residents there are and what would determine voting eligibility.

“The nuance of that has to be discovered by the province, and the province needs to make the system fair across the province because this is not just a Calgary-based request,” said Wong.

The Calgary councillor was not surprised at McIver’s response, he said. He added that McIver is very involved and understands Alberta and Calgary’s multiculturalism. 

“I know that he wouldn’t dismiss it just because of personal feelings about us. He would weigh the arguments presented by all municipalities,” said Wong.

“All members of council are always amenable to persuasion, and therefore nobody’s cast a vote as of yet. And I think Calgarians need to understand that.”.

True North reached out to McIver for additional comment. His office said he has nothing more to add to his previous post to X. 

Source: Minister preemptively shuts down Calgary proposal to let permanent residents vote

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Alberta’s population growth is breaking records, but signs of strain are showing

2024/04/16 Leave a comment

Of note, affordability issue in Alberta:

…But what is happening right now in Alberta is different than in the past, said Mark Parsons, chief economist for ATB Financial.

“Alberta’s is a relatively strong economy, so the fast rate of job growth is contributing to the influx of people coming into the province, no question,” Mr. Parsons said.

“What’s different this time is that affordability is playing an important role – particularly housing affordability.”

Experts say Canada’s housing crisis, and the affordability of the Alberta real estate market compared with places such as Toronto and Vancouver, is one of the reasons the province has been the destination for so many U-Hauls and moving trucks.

In fact, housing affordability was one of the carrots the Alberta government dangled with its “Alberta is Calling” ad campaign, which ran in the spring of 2023 in Southern Ontario and Atlantic Canada. The campaign urged Canadians who can’t afford a home where they live to consider moving to Alberta, with its comparatively high salaries and lower real estate prices.

While the campaign was a smashing success from a marketing perspective, Alberta’s population boom has downsides. The sharp uptick in residents has helped drive economic growth, supporting retail and restaurant sales in the province and leading to a flurry of construction activity, but it has also made Alberta’s famously affordable real estate less affordable.

“In 2022, it felt like everyone was saying, ’Alberta’s on sale, this is great, this is amazing,’” said Calgary real estate agent Dawn Herron Maser.

“But now people who are from here are starting to feel like, ’Is it really that much on sale any more? Because we’re here in Alberta and we’re struggling. We’re struggling to buy our homes here.’”

In Calgary, the benchmark home price in March was $597,600, nearly 11 per cent higher than the previous year, according to the Calgary Real Estate Board. Anecdotes abound of wild bidding wars between buyers willing to waive all conditions and offer tens of thousands more than the asking price, a phenomenon that has become prevalent in hot markets such as Toronto and Vancouver.

Calgary and Edmonton also saw the sharpest acceleration in rent prices among major Canadian cities in 2023. In Calgary specifically, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in 2023 jumped 14.3 per cent, the highest year-over-year growth in the country and the sharpest single-year rise in rent growth the city has seen since 2007, data from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. show.

Adam Legge, president of the Business Council of Alberta, said new homes are simply not being built fast enough to keep up with the province’s growth. And there are other signs of strain showing as well. New arrivals to Alberta are struggling to find family doctors, and unprecedented school enrolment growth has led to overcrowded classrooms.

There is also a shortage of construction workers, welders and all of the other skilled tradespeople needed to build everything from houses to schools to roads as quickly as possible.

“We just aren’t seeing a sufficient inflow of new Albertans, either interprovincially or internationally, coming with those kinds of skills and credentials,” Mr. Legge said.

While the pace of population growth in Alberta is expected to moderate this year and in 2025, ATB Financial predicts it will still be strong compared with most other parts of Canada and developed economies around the world.

In the long term, sustained growth is likely. The province’s economy is diversifying, creating opportunities for workers in non-oil and gas-related fields such as technology and aviation, and the proximity of the Rocky Mountains and some of Canada’s best-loved national parks continues to be a draw for tourists.

The Alberta government’s own projections call for the province’s population to hit six million people as early as 2039.

“We really need to start looking at Alberta, and the West in general, in a different way,” said Mr. Ernst, with the Centre for Newcomers, adding that both provincial and federal governments need to prepare for the growth that is coming by investing in housing, infrastructure, programs and education.

“We’ve got to really think critically about the allocation of resources in this country – really understanding where people are moving, where people are setting up, where some of the population pressures are.”

Mr. Legge agreed, adding it’s vital that Alberta prepare for its future by addressing areas that are already under strain because of the province’s rapid growth.

“The message ’Alberta is Calling’ is clearly working, which is a great thing in the sense of growth for the province and the people who are bringing their skills and talents and passions and entrepreneurship here,” he said.

“We’ve just got to make sure that we don’t become victims of our own success, and tackle some of the challenges that are already putting strain on our quality of life.”

Source: Alberta’s population growth is breaking records, but signs of strain are showing

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Police in schools has long been a topic of debate. In Alberta, at least, the students have spoken

2023/09/04 Leave a comment

Good example of serious research and examination of the evidence of the experience of having police school resource officers in schools. Money quote: “…it is worth remembering that social policies need to be grounded in empirical evidence. Ideally, that evidence should be collected by researchers without preordained opinions.”

Not, of course, unique to this issue as advocates and activists, including researchers, often have “preordained opinions” rather than looking at the evidence more dispassionately.

I come across this regularly in my analysis of public service diversity. My How well is the government meeting its diversity targets? An intersectionality analysis, which showed that Black public servants were not under-represented at the all employees level, and less under-represented at the EX level than South Asian, Chinese and Filipino public servants. Black hiring rates were among the highest, separations the lowest and promotion rates second highest, with overall visible minority hiring and promotion rates higher than not visible minority. Overall visible minority hiring rates were higher than not visible minorities, separation rates were lower (likely reflecting age) and promotion rates were also higher over the 2017-22 period.

This prompted Twitter discussion, with advocates arguing for a disproportionality index based on narrow salary bands rather than my approach based on the broader occupational groups, including EX, and the hiring, separation and promotion data for the last six years. While some engaged on the substance of the different approaches, some “activists on a pension” public servants simply disregarded an “inconvenient truth” to their narratives:

The presence of police in schools, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs), has been a topic of debate for decades. However, after the global movement critically examining the role of the police in modern society, these discussions have intensified. Proponents argue police in schools reduce crime, keep students safe and improve police-community relations. On the other hand, critics maintain that SRO programs are costly and disproportionately disadvantage Black, Indigenous and other marginalized students. Activists and community leaders often argue that SROs contribute to the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Several American studies have found that racialized students are subjected to higher levels of police surveillance within schools and are more likely to be disciplined and/or charged by SROs. These studies have also found that students disciplined by school-based police officers often maintain a criminal label, have poor educational and career outcomes, and are at increased risk of becoming further entrenched in the criminal-justice system. Does the same situation exist in Canada?

Most Canadian research has failed to explore whether SROs disproportionately affect racialized and marginalized students. Nonetheless, a few small-scale studies have suggested that racialized and marginalized youth are likelier to have negative experiences with SROs than their white counterparts. Advocates have used these findings to support removing SRO programs from several large Canadian school boards. However, in the aftermath of recent high-profile incidents of violence in Canadian schools, including student homicides in Toronto and Edmonton, there is renewed support for returning the police to schools. How should we as society assess the different perspectives on this issue? As university professors, we believe that answering such challenging questions begins with rigorous empirical research.

Between 2022 and 2023 we conducted research on SRO programs within both the Edmonton Catholic and public school systems. Our multimethod approach included a review of official SRO records and focus groups, interviews and surveys with over 11,000 students, 4,000 parents and 650 teachers. These are the largest and most comprehensive such studies in Canada. Unlike most other Canadian studies, we explicitly set out to explore and understand the perceptions and experiences of racialized and marginalized students. We found that:

  • Regardless of race, sexual orientation and self-reported disability status, students and parents were much more likely to report positive experiences with their SRO (approximately 45 per cent of all respondents) than negative experiences (approximately 7 per cent of all respondents). Positive experiences included feelings of safety, assistance with victimization incidents, assistance with personal problems, informal conflict resolution, mentorship, legal education, and innovative strategies for discipline and reform.
  • Regardless of race, sexual orientation and disability status, most students reported that their SRO made them feel safe at school and was a positive member of their school community. Few students felt targeted or intimidated by their SRO.
  • Regardless of race, few students and parents felt that SROs treat Black, Indigenous and other racialized students worse than white students. It was also uncommon for participants to believe officers were biased toward sexual minorities and students with disabilities.
  • Most teachers believed SROs reduce, not increase, formal disciplinary actions (i.e., suspensions, expulsions, arrests etc.) against students. Teachers felt students would be treated more harshly by regular police officers who might be called to the school if the school did not have an SRO.
  • Regardless of race, sexual orientation and disability status, most students, parents and teachers (approximately 80 per cent of all respondents) want the SRO program retained or reinstated at their school. Few want to see the program permanently suspended (approximately 8 per cent of all respondents).

That said, the results of our studies are not all positive. Both teachers and students believed SROs are sometimes called to deal with non-criminal student conduct issues (including lateness) that school staff should handle. Teachers and students also complained that certain police officers – particularly those with an enforcement orientation – should not work with youth and should be screened out and removed from SRO programs.

While most Black and Indigenous students and parents supported Edmonton’s SRO program, Black and Indigenous students were somewhat more likely to support suspending the program than respondents from other racial backgrounds. Black and Indigenous students were also more likely to report negative experiences with SROs, including allegations of oversurveillance, targeting and unfair disciplinary decisions.

Our study also uncovered considerable weaknesses in how the school boards and the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) document SRO activities. How often are SROs involved in school disciplinary decisions, including suspensions and expulsions? How often do SROs ticket, arrest or lay charges against students? Are Black, Indigenous and other marginalized students disproportionately involved in SRO enforcement decisions? Does the presence of an SRO significantly reduce illegal activity on school property? We cannot answer these and other important questions with the existing data. If school boards retain SRO programs, we recommend improving the data being collected, including collecting data on the race and other demographic characteristics of those affected by SRO activities. At the same time, students and caregivers with personal experience with expulsions, suspensions and other interventions consistently reported being treated more harshly by school administrators than by SROs. This (perhaps surprising) finding suggests that leaving conduct issues in the hands of school administrators might lead to more harm for students and families – yet another aspect that warrants expanded data collection.

While many questions remain, our overall finding is that racialized and marginalized students and their families support SRO programs. Further, our results provide little evidence of perceived racial bias. This is news in a climate where some Canadian social scientists and activists now demand that SRO programs be eliminated. Unsurprisingly, they were not happy with our findings.

In the past, our research has – in various contexts – uncovered racial bias with respect to police street checks, arrest decisions and use of force. While the police largely dismissed these results, activists embraced our findings, using them as valuable evidence to support discussions about racial profiling. Our study of SROs has produced the opposite effect: Some advocates and scholars have been quick to criticize our findings because they do not support their preferred policies, while police organizations seem to support the results, without acknowledging negative findings.

This is concerning, but in some respects, these public responses fit a familiar pattern whereby activists and organizations selectively embrace, reject or ignore scholarly research depending on whether it supports or challenges their political position or preferred policies. However, one thing that makes the Edmonton SRO situation slightly different is that those who have opposed the SRO programs have said they were voicing the desires of Edmonton’s Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities. Our evidence, in contrast, demonstrates that such groups mainly support the SRO program, raising questions about who legitimately speaks on behalf of the interests of Black, Indigenous and other racialized parents and students on such issues in Alberta.

We deliberately mention Alberta because it is entirely possible that SRO programs in other jurisdictions are poorly run, biased and not supported by local communities. As researchers, we understand that context matters in how well any program or initiative operates. However, attention to such local specificity often gets lost on the political stage when people make sweeping statements embracing or rejecting policies without knowing or paying attention to the local details.

Given how many aspects of policing are contentious within Canada, it is worth remembering that social policies need to be grounded in empirical evidence. Ideally, that evidence should be collected by researchers without preordained opinions.

Kanika Samuels-Wortley is an associate professor in the faculty of social science and humanities at Ontario Tech University.

Scot Wortley is a professor in the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

Sandra Bucerius is a professor of sociology and criminology and director of the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Alberta.

Source: Police in schools has long been a topic of debate. In Alberta, at least, the students have spoken

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Tom Flanagan: Why the Liberals once tried to ban Black immigration

2023/08/23 Leave a comment

Bit silly to tie this ban to the Liberals as Conservative government’s of that and other early periods were equally exclusionary:

“Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain….”

Oklahoma! is a classic work of American musical theatre. Probably everyone has heard some of the music even if they haven’t seen the stage play or movie. Composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein immortalized the frontier conflict between “the cowman and the farmer” — but they left out a bigger, racially-charged conflict surrounding Oklahoma’s accession to statehood in 1907. This conflict included an inspiring Canadian dimension.

The new state had a large Indian population because it had been carved out of the United States’ Indian Territory. The so-called “Five Civilized Nations” of the southeastern American states (most notably the Cherokee), had been deported there in the 1830s by Democrat President Andrew Jackson in the infamous Trail of Tears expulsion.

These tribes had acquired, from their southern white neighbours, the practice of owning Black slaves. They brought along thousands of slaves, who became the nucleus of Oklahoma’s Black population. After the Union States of the North won the Civil War, the Indian tribes emancipated their slaves, but former slave-owners continued to look down on Black people. In this, they were joined by many white settlers who flooded into the Indian Territory from nearby southern states.

After the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 enunciated the odious segregationist doctrine of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, whites and Indians alike in Oklahoma began planning to entrench and extend “Jim Crow” segregation laws. Once Oklahoma became a state, legislators set to work, passing one Jim Crow law after another, segregating schools and public buildings, and outlawing interracial marriage.

Canada during this same period was actively seeking agricultural immigrants to fill up the Prairie provinces. Small groups of Oklahoma Blacks, led by their Baptist ministers, decided they didn’t like what statehood would mean for them without the protection of the U.S. federal government. As one immigrant put it: “Things began getting worse for our people. So, my father, always ambitious and proud, wanted to go where every man was accepted on his merit or demerit, regardless of race, colour or creed. So, in the summer of 1909, we moved to Canada.”

It was a long overland journey of more than 3,000 km. Between 1905 and 1911, about 1,000 Black people from Oklahoma moved to Canada to homestead in the West, establishing five small farming villages, of which the best-known were Eldon, near Maidstone in Saskatchewan, and Amber Valley, north of Edmonton in Alberta.

Some Canadians welcomed their new neighbours while others complained to the federal government. “We view with alarm the continuous and rapid influx of Negro settlers,” the Alberta chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire wrote to the minister of the interior in Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government.

In response, Laurier’s cabinet passed an order-in-council prohibiting Black immigration to Canada for one year. Its rationale? The “race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada.” The order, however, did not need enforcement because the Liberal government had already run newspaper ads and sent speakers to Oklahoma to tell Blacks that they would not be happy in the cold Canadian climate. Laurier rescinded the order after losing the 1911 election, knowing that Robert Borden’s newly elected Conservative government would repeal it.

The Black homesteaders survived and thrived in their villages; their children and grandchildren eventually moved to the cities, and indeed all over the world. Today the largest concentration of their descendants remains in Edmonton. They founded the Shiloh Baptist Church there in 1910 because other churches didn’t want them as members. That church still functions as the religious home of a mixed-race congregation.

The U.S. was the world’s first large-scale democracy, which was truly a historic achievement. But the democratic rule of the majority can lead to the oppression of racial minorities. Black Oklahomans found greater toleration in Canada’s constitutional monarchy than in American democracy.

Is it surprising that a Liberal government deliberately excluded the Black race from immigrating to Canada? Not really. Liberal governments wrote the first Indian Act in 1876, banned Chinese immigration in the 1920s and interned Japanese Canadians during World War II.

Because of their suffering on the notorious Trail of Tears, the Five Civilized Nations are one of the prime victim groups of American history. Yet they adopted the practice of Black slavery from the whites who drove them out of their ancestral homes and continued it in the West.

Despite all these ironies and hypocrisies, this story had a happy ending. Freedom-seeking people found refuge and a new life in Canada, and that’s worth celebrating.

The original, full-length version of this essay was recently published in C2C Journal.

Tom Flanagan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary.

Source: Tom Flanagan: Why the Liberals once tried to ban Black immigration

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

Alberta, and the rest of Canada, are woefully unprepared for the coming immigration boom 

2023/07/17 Leave a comment

Over focus on the challenge to settlement agencies compared to the real physical and workforce challenges in housing, healthcare and infrastructure. Settlement service stats have been largely flat compared to the pre-pandemic period, suggesting less demand than stated:

There’s a long list of reasons for Canada to open its arms to newcomers from around the world – but when you invite half a million new people to the country every year, you better be prepared. And it’s looking more and more like we’re not.

It goes beyond the affordable-housing crunch and whether everyone will have access to primary health care. Now, some of the Calgary agencies that help people get settled in the country say uncertainty about funding from the federal government is leading to long waiting lists and layoffs.

“It’s always been a challenge, but I’ve never seen it like this. Never,” said Shirley Philips, interim chief executive at Immigrant Services Calgary, who has decades of experience in the sector.

ISC said they will receive less money from Ottawa – which makes up the majority of their funding – this fiscal year than last year. Contract updates from the federal government don’t reflect increased demand even as Alberta’s largest city grows by leaps and bounds, and so job vacancies won’t be filled.

Newcomers are already facing a 55-day wait to get a language proficiency assessment done, Ms. Philips said. And then four to six months to get into English classes after that. As demand continues to grow, she fears those wait times will stretch longer.

“You’ve got this talent pool that Canada says they want in their country, but we’re doing very little even at the basic level of language, employment services and housing.”

Another agency, the Centre for Newcomers, has laid off about 65 people – almost a quarter of its staff – in recent weeks. Chief program officer Kelly Ernst said the issue is a delay in contract updates with the federal government, which would provide a flow of money based on higher demand. He’s worried about some people falling through the cracks, as was the case for a newly arrived Ukrainian family he said his agency found living on the streets of Calgary last week.

“We served over 35,000 people last year, and if this continues, we’re going to break that record again this year,” Mr. Ernst said.

For its part, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said planned investment for settlement services in Alberta is increasing by 6 per cent this year, to nearly $133-million.

“These investments align with Alberta’s proportion of all permanent resident landings,” the federal department said in a statement to The Globe and Mail.

IRCC did not comment on the situation for individual agencies, but added it has “in the past, adjusted investments over the course of the year to respond to pressures, such as an influx of newcomers, and when additional funding becomes available.”

Overall, the department’s budget is being reduced beginning this fiscal year. Temporary programs are being wound down, including the commitment to resettle at least 40,000 Afghans by the end of this year, and provisions for Ukrainians making their way to Canada.

The problem is, settlement agencies say, Afghans and Ukrainians are still coming and they still need help getting acclimatized in Canada – as do many more from all around the world.

The numbers are huge. The federal government is aiming to welcome between 410,000 and 505,000 new permanent residents this year, between 430,000 and 542,500 in 2024, and between 442,500 and 550,000 in 2025. Canada is well on its way to reaching – or exceeding – those ambitious goals, with Statistics Canada saying the country welcomed 145,417 immigrants in the first quarter of 2023, the highest number for any quarter on record. (There was also a net gain of 155,300 non-permanent residents in the first quarter.)

It’s unclear whether Calgary immigration agencies are alone in their struggle for federal funding. Edmonton MP and cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault said he’s not hearing the same concerns in Alberta’s capital.

On a percentage basis, the Alberta population is growing at a rate not seen for more than a century – back to a time when prairie sod houses were a perfectly acceptable form of housing. The provincial population has increased by 200,000 in the past 12 months, standing at more than 4.7 million. The numbers are surging in part because of interprovincial migration, but mostly as a result of new arrivals from outside of Canada.

Another factor that might not be fully quantified is that many immigrants land in Ontario or Quebec, and then make their way to Alberta – often Calgary – when they find out housing is less expensive and there’s plentiful work. This “secondary migration” might not be reflected in federal funding to settlement agencies, their leaders say.

Canada is built on immigration. There is a moral imperative for the country to help those whose lives have been torn apart by war or deeply regressive governments. Climate change is likely to force the movement of millions more.

There are also economic reasons to welcome immigrants. The country badly needs workers – everyone from medical professionals to home builders to child care providers. Canada also needs younger workers, as the country’s population grows greyer.

“We actually need a million people a year. But that would definitely crack the system,” Mr. Boissonnault said.

Calgary immigration agencies are looking to increase their budgets through private donations. And the Alberta government said in its budget that it would provide an extra $7-million over three years for settlement and language supports, on top of some regular funding. That money will start to flow by year’s end.

It all might not be fast enough. It’s already a struggle to provide affordable housing for everyone. The Bank of Canada acknowledged this as it hiked interest rates again this week, in part in another desperate attempt to dampen what appears insatiable demand for real estate in the country.

And beyond finding everyone a place to live, not having basic settlement services in place to help people as they arrive on this scale is indefensible. The soaring political messaging from Ottawa on immigration needs to come with solid support for the agencies doing the on-the-ground work.

Source: Alberta, and the rest of Canada, are woefully unprepared for the coming immigration boom

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A No-Nonsense View of Birth Tourism

2023/05/31 Leave a comment

National Post picks up on this useful Alberta study:

Last week, Maclean’s magazine published an interesting little one-interview piece featuring Simrit Brar, an OB-GYN physician at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital. Author Liza Agrba had caught wind of an interesting and overlooked study, published in January 2022, on the contentious topic of “birth tourism” — i.e., pregnant foreigners who visit Canada for the purpose of having their babies be born with Canadian citizenship. Past attempts to count birth tourists required some statistical inference, but Dr. Brar led a groundbreaking local effort to enumerate them directly and learn whatever could be discovered about their health outcomes and their effects on Calgary hospital capacity. 

This opportunity was provided through what the economists might call a “natural experiment.” In July 2019, the Calgary health region, which was not quite sure how much birth tourism the region was actually seeing, created a “Central Triage” office designed to capture all prenatal referrals for uninsured maternity patients. 

As Brar et al. describe it, this administrative creature was instituted with a number of goals. It allowed hospitals to distinguish situationally uninsured patients — refugees, persons with expired visas and undocumented residents — from intentional tourists. It established a process for getting full consent from the uninsured, who might have had a nebulous legal status otherwise, and it allowed Alberta Health Services to impose some order on chaotic physician-service pricing. And patients placed in the “birth tourist” category were given pamphlets explaining, basically, “We don’t want you here, although we can’t chase you away,” and were required to hand over a refundable deposit of $15,000. 

The study describes the traffic experienced by this unique Central Triage (CT) system. Of 227 pregnant patients sent to CT without Canadian health insurance over a period of 15½ months, 102 were labelled tourists and 125 were uninsured residents. A few of the birth tourists were lost to follow-up for various reasons (a few went home or gave birth outside Calgary, perhaps as a way of evading the cash deposit), but 83 were treated in Calgary hospitals. About a quarter of the tourists were from Nigeria, 18 per cent were from the Middle East and 11 per cent were from China. 

Calgary has about 15,000 childbirths in a typical year, so those 83 patients represent an added burden on maternity services of about half a percentage point — all other things being equal. But the first thing to note is that the study period ran up to Nov. 1, 2020. About two-thirds of it thus coincided with the COVID pandemic, and doctors did observe a decline in tourism visits when world air travel basically shut down. 

Moreover, Calgary was the only place in Canada where birth tourists were, and are, being discouraged by means of a deposit. (Dr. Brar told Maclean’sshe is concerned that the Central Triage system may be diverting tourism patients to suburban and rural hospitals that are even more overmatched than the city’s.) 

Most of the birth tourists ended up using less than the $15,000 deposit and received refunds, but the study reveals that even in a city determined to address birth tourism consciously, it might create external problems. Birth tourists often arrive in Canada late in pregnancy, when air travel is risky, and some arrive with health problems from the Third World. One tourist was diagnosed with HIV in Calgary and three needed to have cervical cerclagesremoved. Since uninsured patients are on the meter while in an Alberta hospital, they may leave against medical advice. Nine birth-tourist babies required time in the neonatal intensive care unit, including a pair of twins who were in the NICU for 50 and 63 days at the worst conceivable time. 

The kicker is that collecting hospital fees from birth tourists can be tricky if the cost of their care goes over the deposit. During the 15½ months of the study, the tourists ran up about $700,000 in Alberta health bills that are still unpaid. Brar takes a surprisingly unsentimental view of the birth-tourism phenomenon in her Maclean’s interview, emphasizing the “finite” nature of Canadian health care and the affluent nature of the tourists. Her team’s paper suggests making the Central Triage setup province-wide, and perhaps it ought to be imitated even more widely.

Source: A No-Nonsense View of Birth Tourism

Filed under Birthright Citizenship Tagged with , ,

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