Phillips: Kaffiyeh ban unites all leaders, who are aware of Muslim voter influence in Ontario

2024/04/27 Leave a comment

Hard to maintain the argument that the kaffiyeh is primarily cultural given context, the statements of Sara Jama and the nature and discourse of protests. And as to Phillips using turbans and kirpans as a counter example, these are primarily religious, even if for some they also have a political significance.

Being sensitive to community concerns does not necessarily mean agreement given conflicting concerns among communities, as the current Jewish Palestinian tensions illustrate, and thus Speaker Arnott made the right call which needs of course, to be implemented with rigorous consistency for all political symbols:

The Speaker of Ontario’s legislature, Ted Arnott, has done something rare: he’s managed to get the leaders of all four parties at Queen’s Park united on a controversial issue.

Of course, they’re united against him — specifically against the ban he’s imposed on wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs in the provincial parliament, indeed anywhere in the legislative precinct that he oversees.

His decision has ignited a fierce debate: is the kaffiyeh, the checkered head scarf worn by Palestinians since time immemorial, cultural or political?

The answer to that binary question must be yes. It’s both — depending. The kaffiyeh has long been a cultural symbol of Palestinian identity. But wearing it has become more political, especially since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war last October.

That’s basically what Arnott said when he announced his ban. Wearing kaffiyehs “at the present time in our assembly,” he said, has become political. Arnott presumably thinks he’s just being consistent by banning kaffiyehs in line with established rules against wearing anything that “is intended to make an overt political statement.”

But what an unnecessary mess he’s created. This was a non-issue at Queen’s Park until Arnott issued his ban, apparently in response to a complaint by one unidentified MPP. It’s not as if there was a rash of kaffiyeh-wearing in the legislature. The only member who regularly wears one is independent Sara Jama, who was thrown out of the NDP caucus last year for her stand on the Mideast conflict.

Now we have the spectacle of Jama being told to leave the chamber for wearing a kaffiyeh. And a group of Arab-Canadian lawyers denied entry to the legislature when they wore kaffiyehs to a meeting with NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

I’m with the party leaders (including Premier Doug Ford) on this one. No doubt there’s a political dimension to wearing a kaffiyeh these days, but the long-established cultural tradition can’t be denied either. Why make an issue out of it at a time when feelings are running so high? Remember the fuss years ago about turbans and kirpans worn by Sikhs? In hindsight it seems like a fight about nothing.

Focusing on the kaffiyeh raises questions of consistency as well. What about wearing a tie or scarf in Ukrainian national colours? One of the Conservative MPPs who refused unanimous consent to overturn Arnott’s decision, Robin Martin, wore a necklace in the legislature emblazoned with “bring them home” in solidarity with Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Good for her, but wasn’t that also “political?”

Some have made much of the fact that party leaders opposing the ban may not be acting entirely for principled reasons, given the byelection set for May 2 in Milton where Muslim voters could make the difference.

I find it hard to be shocked by the notion of politicians acting for political reasons, and in this case the lesson to be drawn is “get used to it.” What’s happening in Milton is just a taste of how Muslim voters may have an impact in key ridings in the next federal election.

All provincial parties are courting Muslim voters in Milton, where 23 per cent of the population identified as Muslim in the 2021 census. The Liberal candidate, Galen Naidoo Harris, who isn’t Arab or Palestinian, has even made a point of wearing a kaffiyeh in social media postings.

Muslim voters are already an important factor in our politics. An organization called The Canadian-Muslim Vote identified more than 100 ridings in 2021where the Muslim vote exceeded the expected margin of victory. Many (including Milton) are in the GTA and will be fiercely fought over in the next federal election.

All the more reason for political leaders to be sensitive to the concerns of Muslim voters, as they’ve learned to be sensitive to the concerns of Sikh, Italian, Ukrainian, Jewish, you-name-it voters who aren’t shy about mobilizing their communities around issues that matter to them.

Banning the kaffiyeh is that kind of issue for an increasingly influential slice of voters. There are good reasons of principle to drop the ban. The politics of it point in that direction too.

Source: Kaffiyeh ban unites all leaders, who are aware of Muslim voter influence in Ontario

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Phillips: How Muslim voters are exerting their growing political influence

2023/12/16 Leave a comment

Another number: Canadian Jews from more than 5 percent of the population in 13 ridings compared to Canadian Muslims forming more that 5 percent in 114 ridings:

But the Trudeau government surely didn’t need much encouragement to move in that direction, and it didn’t necessarily have to do with geopolitical calculations. You only have to look at changing demographics in this country and their far-reaching political implications.

This can be touchy territory, so let’s specify a couple of things upfront.

There’s nothing wrong with any community, including Muslims, organizing to maximize their political impact. That’s as Canadian as butter tarts. Virtually every group has done it — from the English and Irish to francophone Quebecers, Ukrainians, Italians, Sikhs, you name it.

And ethnic voting doesn’t explain everything about this or any issue. You don’t have to be Muslim to be appalled at the death toll in Gaza, no more than you have to be Jewish to be sickened by the massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

But in this case, there’s no ignoring the increase in Muslim voters. A few numbers: the 2001 census showed there were 579,000 Muslims in this country (or 1.95 per cent of the population). The most recent census, in 2021, put that number at 1.77 million (4.9 per cent).

That’s a dramatic rise. By contrast, Muslims are only an estimated 1.1 per cent of the U.S. population, meaning their relative demographic weight in Canada is almost five times as large.

Another relevant comparison: in 2001, Canada’s Jewish population was put at 330,000. The 2021 census measured it at 335,000 — virtually the same. So while the country’s Jewish population flatlined, its Muslim population tripled….

But no party can ignore the new reality. Demographics, they say, are destiny. And right now they’re showing Muslim voters must be taken seriously.

Andrew Phillips is a Toronto-based staff columnist for the Star’s Opinion page. Reach him via email: aphillips@thestar.ca

Source: How Muslim voters are exerting their growing political influence

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

“The Times They Are A-Changin’?” – Immigration debates and discussions

2023/05/29 Leave a comment

A few years ago, it was rare to find critiques of the government’s expanding levels of immigration, and the overall consensus among the provinces, business organizations and lobby groups, media and academics organizations in favour of this approach.

However, over the past year or so, there has been significant commentary questioning the approach given the impact on housing availability and affordability, healthcare and infrastructure. In addition to my 2021 Increasing immigration to boost population? Not so fast, former head of the British Columbia public service, Don Wright, wrote one of the stronger critiques, Will Trudeau make it impossible for Eby to succeed?

National unity and the demographic weight of Quebec in Canada has become a second major critique. A series of articles in Quebecor papers (LE QUÉBÉC PRIS AU PIÈGE PAR OTTAWA) highlighting an accelerating decline of Quebec’s population relative to the rest of Canada, reflecting different immigration rates has provoked considerable political debate and commentary in Quebec and English Canadian media.

While the Quebecor were written in an incendiary manner, the substance was correct. The approaches continue to diverge, there is, IMO, an unhealthy consensus in favour ot the current and projected levels of permanent and temporary migration among federal and provincial politicians, business organizations, academics among others.

Some of the commentary recognized that. Stuart Thompson the The Hub, A new era of immigration politics has started in Canada was one of the first to recognize the potential importance to immigration debates and discussions. Chris Selley chimed in, noting that Ottawa has no answer to Quebec’s anti-immigrant narrative. Campbell Clark stressed that Two solitudes emerging on immigration in Quebec, and noted the lame arguments on both sides of the debate. Formally, the Quebec government reject[ed] Trudeau’s immigration plan, fears decline of French.

The role of the Century Initiative received increased prominence given that these debates were happening around the time of one of its Globe and Mail sponsored conferences. Immigration Minister Fraser’s denial that the government had not adopted the 100 million population goal of the Century Initiative was met with understandable cynicism by Robert Dutrisac, Blanc bonnet, bonnet blanc, Konrad Yakabuski, L’«initiative du siècle» n’est pas l’idée du siècle among others, along with more reporting and analysis, Serons-nous vraiment 100 millions de Canadiens en 2100?.

English media commentary focussed more on the politics, with Chantal Hébert asking whether Hébert: Quebec’s separatists were searching for a way to revive their cause. Is this it? and Konrad Yakabuski, another rare journalist who writes in both English and French media, noting that François Legault’s anti-immigration crusade is coming back to bite him. Andrew Phillips in the Star dismissed Quebec concerns, framing it as a Panic attack in Quebec over immigration threat. Althia Raj, also in the Star, argued that: Pierre Poilievre is courting voters by capitalizing on immigration fears in Quebec, both discounting the substance of Quebec concerns and not questioning the federal government approach.

And of course most English language was focused on the less important issue of the passport redesign (not a fan, but my worry is that the controversy will make the government even more skittish about releasing the revised citizenship guide, Discover Canada, first promised in 2016).

Surprisingly, Andrew Coyne focussed more on Quebec, politics and demography, rather than contributing his usual economic take on issues. Almost a childish approach in 100 million Canadians by 2100 may not be federal policy, but it should be – even if it makes Quebec howl, largely ignoring the negative impacts on housing, healthcare and infrastructure and, more bizarrely, falling into the trap of overall GDP rather than productivity and per capita GDP (which most of his economic-related columns focus on).

All this being said, the Quebec government took advantage of the controversy to announce changes to its immigration program Six éléments à retenir des annonces de Québec en immigration, including increased levels to 60,000 new permanent residents while allowing ongoing temporary resident growth. This slight-of-hand was of course noted by Michel David, Et la lumière fut and Plus d’immigrants pour éviter une « louisianisation » ici ? 

This modest increase will not, of course, make any significant change to the ongoing divergence in population growth between Quebec and the Rest of Canada and Quebec’s relative weight in the country.

A recent Statistics Canada study, Unemployment and job vacancies by education, 2016 to 2022, highlighting the disconnect between immigration policy, which favours university-educated immigrants, and immigrant employment, which favours lower-skilled immigrants, provides another example of how our immigration policies appear more to be “policy-driven evidence” rather than “evidence-based policy.”

Questions on immigration levels have broadened from housing, healthcare and infrastructure impacts to the impact on the Canadian federation given the imbalance between Quebec and the Rest of Canada. A potential sleeper issue, parallel to Quebec’s relative share of the population is with respect to Indigenous peoples, given that high immigration levels dwarf Indigenous growth (visible minorities increased by 26.5 percent, Indigenous peoples by 9.4 percent, 2021 compared to 2016).

As I have argued previously, we need to find a way to have more productive discussions on immigration rather than the various solitudes between the “more the merrier” and “great replacement” camps (where most Canadians are). The disconnect between Quebec and the Rest-of-Canada is a long-term threat to the federation.

A focus on the practicalities – housing, healthcare and infrastructure impacts – is likely the best way forward and may provide a means to reduce the divergence between the “two solitudes.”

Ideally, of course, some form of commission examining demographics, immigration, and these impacts would provide deeper analysis and recommendations than current IRCC consultations or any other internal review.

To end with a quote from another favourite musician of mine:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Phillips: Storm over Elghawaby appointment proof of need for someone like her in the job

2023/02/01 Leave a comment

Representative of the favourable commentary to her appointment. I agree, if she hadn’t been public on her opposition to Bill 21 and the public attitudes behind it and previous Quebec debates, she would have no credibility. It is more with respect with her other positions that questions can be asked:

It took 18 months for the Trudeau government to carry through on its promise to name a “special representative” to combat Islamophobia. It took just 24 hours for that appointment to blow up in its face.

Last Thursday the government announced it had named Amira Elghawaby to the position. Elghawaby is well known to us at the Star; she’s been contributing thoughtful, insightful articles to our opinion pages for several years on all sorts of subjects, with a focus on social justice issues.

It was an excellent and well-deserved appointment. The government patted itself on the back for making it a few days before the anniversary of the Quebec City mosque massacre. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it an “important step” in the fight against “hatred in all its forms.”

But no good deed, as they say, goes unpunished. Elghawaby has been outspoken, as you’d expect, against Quebec’s Bill 21, the frankly discriminatory law that bars people wearing religious symbols (notably Muslim women) from holding certain government jobs. So Montreal’s La Presse reported that Trudeau had just appointed someone who portrays Quebecers as “anti-Muslim.”

Cue the outrage in Quebec. A federal Liberal minister (Pablo Rodriguez) professed to be “profoundly insulted” as a Quebecer by Elghawaby’s comments. Trudeau called on her to “explain” them. By Monday, the Quebec government was demanding her resignation. And Pierre Poilievre found the time to craft a video attacking Trudeau for appointing someone he smeared as “anti-Quebec, anti-Jewish and anti-police.”

Poilievre’s attack is particularly sleazy. His real target isn’t Elghawaby. She’s just road kill in his assault on the Trudeau government and all its works.

It’s also BS. The idea that Elghawaby thinks Quebecers are Muslim haters is based on an article she co-wrote in 2019 for the Ottawa Citizen with Bernie Farber, who is a human-rights activist as well as being Jewish. They cited a poll showing 88 per cent of Quebecers who hold anti-Muslim views supported Bill 21, and wrote that “unfortunately” most Quebecers seemed at that moment to be swayed “by anti-Muslim sentiment.”

Frankly, viewed in the context of the time, when Quebec had just passed the most discriminatory law in modern Canadian history, the article is remarkably moderate. It decries the “tyranny of the majority” and ends with an appeal to uphold “basic human rights and dignity” for all. 

Elghawaby’s other supposedly offensive comments have also been twisted out of shape. As for being “anti-Jewish,” her appointment was welcomed by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the country’s leading Jewish organization, as well as by Irwin Cotler, Canada’s special representative on antisemitism. If she’d taken anti-Jewish positions, you’d think they’d have noticed.

I don’t agree with quite a bit of what Elghawaby has written, such as her view that Canada should abolish the monarchy. But so what? I haven’t seen a thing she’s written that goes beyond the bounds of reasonable debate (and no, I don’t include the occasional badly worded tweet). 

As a human-rights activist she challenges Canadian complacency, but that hardly disqualifies her from serving (in the words of the government’s announcement) as a “champion, adviser, expert and representative” on fighting anti-Muslim hatred. On the contrary.

Some will argue that, regardless of all this, her appointment is “divisive” — the evidence being the reaction to it in Quebec. But the truth is that while hatred of all sorts knows no political boundaries, there is a particular problem with the way Quebec handles issues of religious tolerance and minorities.

The evidence for that is plain for all to see in Bill 21 itself, which is blatantly discriminatory and racist in effect if not in intent. Sure, there’s a complicated history behind all this. But if Islamophobia can’t be frankly confronted in Quebec, of all places, there’s no point in having a national representative on the issue.

On Monday, the prime minister said he’s satisfied with Elghawaby’s explanation of her past remarks and she will remain in place. That’s absolutely the right decision. In fact, the uproar around her appointment is the best possible demonstration of the need for putting someone like her in the job.

Source: Phillips: Storm over Elghawaby appointment proof of need for someone like her in the job

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Phillips: Justin Trudeau has not learned from Hillary Clinton’s infamous ‘deplorables’ gaffe

2023/01/25 Leave a comment

Good advice:

Remember Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables?”

She came up with that peculiar turn of phrase in September, 2016, when she was campaigning for the U.S. presidency against Donald Trump. Half of Trump’s supporters, she declared, were among those deplorables — people who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic.”

There were plenty of reasons why Clinton lost to Trump, but pretty much everyone agrees that dismissing maybe a quarter of American voters as racist, sexist, etc., was one of them. Even Clinton conceded the point in the end. In her memoir of the campaign, “What Happened,” she said she regretted handing Trump “a political gift” by insulting millions of well-intentioned (but wrong) voters.

The lesson — a pretty basic one, you’d think — is that while it’s fine to attack your opponent it’s hardly ever fine to attack their supporters. In the end, you’re after their votes. Not all of them, certainly. Some will never be won over, and some no doubt will be “deplorable” in one way or the other.

But you want to persuade the persuadables, and tarring them with labels like racist and sexist is bound to push people away, not bring them over to your side. At least, that’s how it turned out for Clinton, with tragic results for the United States and the rest of us as well.

In light of that, what to make of Justin Trudeau’s most recent diagnosis of what’s fuelling support for his Conservative rival, Pierre Poilievre?

In a revealing interview with the Star’s Susan Delacourt, the prime minister was eager to take on Poilievre. Trudeau, Delacourt wrote over the weekend, accuses the Conservative leader of “whipping up the anger to appeal to those Canadians who are nostalgic for a country that worked well for them, maybe not so much for others.”

In Trudeau’s words: “He’s playing and preying on the kinds of anger and anxieties about some Canada that used to be — where men were men and white men ruled.”

This is red meat for Poilievre and his core supporters, so it was no surprise to see him jump right on those words. The Conservative leader posted a three-minute video, one of those, “Hey Justin” jobs he’s become so expert at, accusing Trudeau of saying “the reason you claim you’re so unpopular with Canadians is that Canadians are racist.”

So, basic fact check: is that what Trudeau said? Certainly not. Is Poilievre distorting his words for crass political advantage? Of course. 

But is there something to what Poilievre says? Well, kind of. Trudeau didn’t say Canadians are racist; he didn’t even say Poilievre’s supporters are racist. But he did link Canadians’ anger and anxieties to something that could reasonably be interpreted as racist — a fond memory, or nostalgia as Delacourt put it, for a once-upon-a-time Canada where “white men ruled.”

At this point there are people who will be thinking something along the lines of: Right on, Justin. That’s what Poilievre’s really all about. Good for you for “calling out” him and his sleazy supporters. 

To those people, all I would say is — fine, go ahead and think that. But to Trudeau and those around him I would say — don’t go there. If you didn’t actually cross the line into accusing Conservative supporters of being racist, you did edge up to it and took a good look.

Trudeau is actually very thoughtful on these issues. After living through the pandemic and the convoy protests he’s had plenty of opportunity to reflect on what animates the anger across the country — including the fury directed at him personally.

He’s quite right that many people are upset at the way society has changed, and not always for good reasons. But his job isn’t to be a political analyst; it’s to manage that change in a way that unites people and brings as many as possible over to his side. 

To succeed at that, he needs to take on board the lesson Hillary Clinton learned the hard way. Don’t insult people on the other side. It’ll only come back and hit you in the face.

Source: Justin Trudeau has not learned from Hillary Clinton’s infamous ‘deplorables’ gaffe

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

Phillips: Don’t brush off attempts to undermine our democracy. We should know which politicians got China’s money

2022/11/14 Leave a comment

Indeed:

Can we take a break from lecturing Americans about the state of their democracy and focus for a bit on problems with our own?

Canadians love to watch from a safe distance when all the horrors and glories of the American political system are on display, as they are this week as we comb through the results of their midterm elections.

We especially love to pat ourselves on the back for the fact that our system is, for the most part, mercifully free of the most extreme elements of U.S. politics. That’s mostly just good for our national self-regard, but it would be a shame if it distracts us from the disturbing possibility that a foreign power has been actively interfering in our own recent national elections, even changing the outcome in at least one case.

Put like that, it sounds far-fetched. But Global News reported this week that Canada’s intelligence service, CSIS, warned federal ministers in January that China has targeted this country with a “vast campaign of foreign interference.”

According to the report, CSIS told the government that Beijing funded a “clandestine network” of at least 11 federal candidates, including both Liberals and Conservatives, in the 2019 federal election. It also placed “agents” in the offices of MPs to influence policy and mounted “aggressive campaigns” to punish Canadian politicians it saw as threats to its interests.

Asked about this, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t deny it. Instead, he essentially confirmed the report by saying some “state actors,” including China, continue to “play aggressive games with our institutions, with our democracies.”

The government then went on, through a speech by Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, to sketch out its long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy. This is the famous “eyes wide open” approach, whereby Canada will take a more cautious stance toward China and try to deepen links with other Asian nations, in particular India.

But hang on a moment — let’s not change the channel quite so fast. Those CSIS briefings were pretty specific, according to Global’s Sam Cooper. They alleged that the Chinese government funnelled money through proxies to almost a dozen candidates in a federal election and worked to undermine others.

So many questions. Which candidates got the money? How many of them won, and how many lost? For those who did get money, did they know who was ultimately behind it or were they ignorant of what was going on? And which candidates did China work against? What happened to them?

Finally, was this activity limited to just the 2019 election, or was it happening before or after? A former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, says he believes “several Conservative MPs” lost their seats in the 2019 and 2021 elections because China targeted them through social media networks in the Chinese community.

We know the name of at least one who was probably singled out. Conservative MP Kenny Chiu lost his Vancouver-area seat in 2021 after he introduced a bill to set up a registry of agents for foreign governments (something Canada should certainly have). He immediately found himself labelled as anti-Chinese in Chinese-language social media, and is convinced Beijing’s operatives were behind the campaign to defeat him.

Now it seems he wasn’t the only one, if the CSIS briefing to the government is to be believed. It’s in line with many warnings over the years from Canada’s top intelligence officials that China has been actively meddling in our domestic politics, partly by working through sympathetic politicians and partly by manipulating votes in Chinese communities.

Isn’t this something we should know more about? The government received that CSIS briefing in January, but as far as we know it did nothing. 

It’s important to look at the big picture by elaborating a new Indo-Pacific strategy. And judging by Joly’s speech this week, the government seems to be broadly on the right track. 

But in the meantime, we shouldn’t brush off a real attempt to undermine our democracy. Let’s start by asking where that Chinese money went, and to whom.

Source: Don’t brush off attempts to undermine our democracy. We should know which politicians got China’s money

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,