Terry Glavin: B.C. doesn’t need to atone for its origins

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Useful reminder that history and context have nuance:

…British Columbia’s origins owe little to even the most conventional narrative lines that have explained Canadian history.

While the HBC was a pivotal player in B.C.’s early years, it was never much about beaver pelts and furs. The HBC trade was concentrated in tierces and hogsheads of salted salmon. While the Métis were key players in the HBC brigade trails, a third of the HBC workforce west of the Rockies were Hawaiians.

The westward expansion of the Dominion of Canada involved the establishment of provinces by federal law, but that pattern stopped at the Rockies. B.C.’s story runs mostly north-south, and like Newfoundland, B.C. was a self-governing Crown colony that joined Confederation, for good or ill, on its own.

The story of B.C’s colonial survival against the backdrop of overwhelming American military and population pressure is a story written almost entirely by Douglas’s sheer will and force of personality. Douglas was himself a “coloured” person, the son of Martha Ann Ritchie, a free Creole from Barbados, and John Douglas, a Scottish merchant and planter from Glasgow. James’s wife, Lady Amelia Douglas, was the daughter of a Swampy Cree woman and an Irishman from Lachine, Que.

In 1858, when a war broke out between the Nlaka’pamux people and American miners in the Fraser Canyon, Douglas unilaterally annexed the mainland as a British colony in advance of London’s formal declaration. That’s one of history’s ironies. Far from being about stealing Indigenous land, B.C. was established in order to protect Indigenous people from heavily-armed American marauders and to secure to the Indigenous people of the Fraser River all the rights of British subjects.

In 1859, when an American military regiment occupied one of the Southern Gulf Islands in a clear violation of the boundary provisions in the Oregon Treaty, Douglas told the HBC’s Angus McDonald that if the Americans didn’t stay put, he would mobilize “fifty thousand Indian riflemen at Victoria.”

After the American Civil War broke out in April 1861, Douglas suggested to the colonial office in London that he would be glad to lead an expeditionary force to take back the Columbia territory that had fallen to the Americans 20 years earlier, and to keep on going, all the way to San Francisco Bay.

A great part of the success of British Columbia’s early settlement was owing to Douglas’s largely cordial relations with the Indigenous peoples within the colonial ambit. For one thing, Douglas and the Royal Navy were formidable allies to the Coast Salish people against the slave-raiding tribes from further up the coast. For another thing, the Indigenous leadership was fully aware of what had happened once the Americans moved into what would become Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

There was the Cayuse War, the Klamath War, the Salmon River War, the Yakima War, and the Nisqually War.

In Douglas’s vision of a successful colony, the tribes would be not be disturbed in their customary laws, their villages and enclosed fields would be protected along with their rights to hunt and fish “as formerly,” and there would be no removals to reservations. Indigenous people were to have the same rights as any settler and would be full participants in the emerging economy.

It was only because of the insistence of the Colonial Office in London that funds for treaty-making had to be raised locally that Douglas managed to secure only 14 treaties with First Nations on Southern Vancouver Island. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Victoria and Ottawa secured another treaty — with the Nisga’a people of the Nass Valley. Most of B.C. remains without benefit of treaty even now.

Despite the perilous challenges Douglas faced in his day, for the most part, peace prevailed.

In his articulation of how a proper colony should be managed, Douglas made clear that medical care would be denied no one on the basis of race or status, child labour would not be tolerated, common-law marriages should be recognized and public charity should be encouraged. Importantly, slavery, which was a commonplace Indigenous practice, would not be tolerated.

And so, for a time, a peaceable kingdom prevailed on what was to become Canada’s West Coast. Its multiculturalism emerged organically more than a century before it was conjured in the Canadian imagination as the invention of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, later mutating into the “diversity, equity and inclusion” regime strictly enforced by his son, Justin.

It’s why James and Amelia’s children were baptized in several Christian traditions — Catholic, Anglican and Methodist. It’s why the Congregation Emanu-El on Victoria’s Blanshard Street is the oldest continuously-occupied synagogue in Canada. Its cornerstone was laid in 1863. Many if not most of the synagogue’s original fundraising subscribers were gentiles.

When Lumley Franklin was elected mayor of Victoria in 1865, he became the first Jewish mayor in North America. In 1871, the year B.C. joined Confederation, Victoria voters sent Wharf Street merchant Henry Nathan to Ottawa. He was Canada’s first Jewish member of Parliament.

This is not a history that requires atonement, penitential reflection or some “long overdue reckoning.”

It’s certainly not entirely a happy story. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of, either.

Source: Terry Glavin: B.C. doesn’t need to atone for its origins

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Todd: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Inevitable although most asylum seeker and refugee stakeholders remain largely in denial:

Reality is teaching some important lessons to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about flirting with the ideal of virtually open borders. So are Canada’s premiers and the public.

Particularly in regard to asylum seekers.

For months B.C. Premier David Eby and Quebec Premier François Legault have been almost frantically trying to send a message to Trudeau and his childhood friend, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, that they should no longer indulge in their romantic rhetoric of the past.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada,” Trudeau told the world on Twitter/X on Jan. 28, 2017.

It was the day after newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning refugees from Muslim-majority countries. Trump had also proposed the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Trudeau promised to be their saviour.

Even though Eby and Legault are among the most bold in their pushback, they haven’t been alone in trying to educate Trudeau about the costs, in public dollars, of such grandstanding on asylum seekers.

As with the categories of guest workers, international students and immigrants under Trudeau, the number of refugee claimants has soared during his nine-year-old Liberal regime.

There are now 363,000 asylum claimants in the country, according to Statistics Canada — double two years ago.

A couple of years ago most claimants were walking across the U.S. border into Eastern Canada, which U.S. President Joe Biden last year helped to tighten up.

So now most arrive at airports in Toronto and Montreal, and to some extent Calgary and Vancouver, particularly from Asia. They come in  legally with study or travel visas and then make their claims after leaving the airport, saying they’re escaping various forms of persecution.

It normally takes about two years, and often longer if there is an appeal, for the refugee board to research backgrounds and make a ruling on a case, says Anne Michèle Meggs, a former Quebec immigration official who now writes independently on the subject.

This year the average number of asylum claims made per month in B.C. has jumped to 640 — up 37 per cent compared with last year, says Meggs.

B.C. has the third largest intake of asylum claimants in the country. Most still go to Ontario, where she says average monthly claims have leapt by 53 per cent, or Quebec, where they’re up 20 per cent.

Canada’s premiers have been telling Trudeau for the past few months that, regardless of the validity of their assertions, asylum seekers cost taxpayers a great deal of money.

Most arrive with no financial means. And while they wait for their cases to be evaluated to see if they get coveted permanent resident status, federal and provincial agencies often provide social services, housing, food, clothing, health care, children’s education and (in Quebec) daycare.

Stories of an out-of-control refugee system are likely contributing to fast-changing opinion poll results. Last week Leger discovered 60 per cent of Canadians now think there are “too many” newcomers. That’s a huge shift from just 35 per cent in 2019.

It’s the highest rate of dissatisfaction in decades — based in part on demand pressure on housing and infrastructure costs. The negative polling result is consistent across both white and non-white Canadians.

In response to complaints out of Quebec, Trudeau has this year coughed up $750 million more for that province to support refugee claimants who arrived in recent years, mostly at the land border. Last year Quebec dealt with a total of 65,000 claims and Ontario with 63,000, with the largest cohorts from Mexico and India.

But B.C., as Eby is telling anyone who will listen, has received no dollars from Ottawa. The premier described how “frustrating” it is for B.C. to “scrabble around” for funds in the province, where housing is among the most expensive in the world, while Quebec gets extra.

“Our most recent total for last year was 180,000 new British Columbians,” Eby said last month, including asylum seekers among all international migrants to the province. “And that’s great and that’s exciting and it’s necessary, and it’s completely overwhelming.”

Eby didn’t even publicly mention the increasingly bizarre anomaly, based on the three-decades-old Quebec Accord, which each year leads to Quebec getting 10 times more funding than B.C. and Ontario to settle newcomers.

Postmedia News has found Metro Vancouver’s shelters are being overwhelmed by the near-doubling of asylum seekers in B.C. in the past year.

The Salvation Army, which operates 100 beds in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said that since last summer, the proportion of refugee claimants seeking shelter has climbed to about 80 per cent. Meanwhile, about 60 per cent of beds at the Catholic Charities Men’s Shelter in Vancouver were occupied by refugee claimants. Shelters are predominantly funded by taxpayers.

Government statistics show B.C. is now home to 16,837 asylum claimants, says Meggs. That doesn’t include the 5,300 who last year arrived in the province on a more orderly track as government-assisted refugees.

In an article in Inroads magazine, a social policy journal, Meggs says her ”jaw dropped” when Trudeau said in April the number of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers, was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.”

The cognitive dissonance, she explained, is because Trudeau’s government is entirely responsible for the system spinning out-of control since 2015 — and not only in numbers, but in selection criteria, or lack thereof.

Trudeau has admitted chaos particularly characterizes the dilemma with international students, whose numbers have tripled under his reign to 1.1 million. Many are now claiming asylum. B.C. has 217,000 foreign students in post-secondary institutions and another 49,000 in kindergarten-to-Grade-12 programs.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland is among those suggesting it would be best if Canada processed about 50,000 refugee claimants a year, since it doesn’t have absorptive capacity for more — like the 144,000 who applied last year.

One big problem is the government knows little or nothing about a lot of asylum seekers, say Kurland and Meggs (who generally shares the centre-left leanings of her brother, Geoff Meggs, former chief of staff to NDP Premier John Horgan.)

The immigration department’s ignorance is in part because many make their claims online. Officials don’t even know where tens of thousands live. Meanwhile, Meggs laments, countless claimants are both aided and exploited by people smugglers, landlords and underground employers.

Meggs doesn’t really know how Ottawa is going to get things under control. And, if Trump is re-elected in November and follows through on his vow to get rid of millions of undocumented migrants, it’s virtually guaranteed many will head north to Canada, trying to find ways to pass through what Meggs describes as an incredibly long and understaffed border.

Even though Meggs isn’t optimistic about the future of asylum-seeker policy in Canada, at least the premiers and public are making noises. The thing is, given the Liberals’ defensiveness, it’s just far too soon to tell if their criticism will inspire not empty words but authentic change.

Source: Quixotic Trudeau finally getting pushback over asylum-seeker chaos

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‘To me, it was a prison’: Children held in Doukhobor camp in 1950s set to receive apology from B.C. government

2024/02/07 Leave a comment

Of note:

The B.C. government has offered a $10-million compensation package to people taken from their homes as children 70 years ago due to their parents’ religious beliefs.

The offer was made along with an apology from Attorney General Niki Sharma at a private event in Castlegar today, where she met with members and relatives of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors who were forcibly removed from their parents in the 1950s.

Many were placed in a former tuberculosis sanatorium in New Denver, B.C., about 150 kilometres east of Kelowna, between 1953 and 1959, where they have testified they received physical and psychological abuse

The Sons of Freedom were a small group within the Doukhobor community, an exiled Russian Christian group that was once known for naked protests and periodically burning down their own homes as a rejection of materialism.

The provincial government will be making a formal apology later this year for its treatment of children from the Doukhobor community in the Kootenays. But the apology is not seen as an entirely positive development.

There may be up to 100 survivors from the Sons of Freedom group, who are now in their 70s and 80s.

Sharma acknowledged the children were “mistreated both physically and psychologically” and that the government’s actions caused anxiety for the broader Doukhobor community.

Lorraine Walton, the daughter of two survivors of the Doukhobor internment and an advocate for the Lost Voices of New Denver group, said her parents’ souls are finally at peace following the apology.

She acknowledged, however, that the compensation being offered by the government was coming far too late for her parents and uncle, who were interned at New Denver for multiple years.

Source: ‘To me, it was a prison’: Children held in Doukhobor camp in 1950s set to receive apology from B.C. government

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Daphne Bramham: With Canada failing to meet its immigration promises, B.C. needs more control

2022/07/28 Leave a comment

The British Columbia perspective, similar to that of Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

One idea that has been suggested by some is the Provincial Nominee Program should be used for regulated professions (e.g., healthcare, some trades) given that regulatory bodies are provincial, not federal.

Definitely worth consideration as the federal government’s progress on foreign credential recognition appears to have been more about process and consultations than concrete action. Making the provinces directly responsible for selection of applicants in regulated professions might simplify accountabilities:

Across B.C., “Help Wanted” signs are ubiquitous. Labour shortages have forced businesses to drastically cut their hours, hospitals and emergency rooms to close, as well as planned and unscheduled cancellations of B.C. Ferries sailings.

Despite grumbled anecdotes about people not wanting to work, B.C. has one of Canada’s highest workforce participation rates.

Bear in mind that last year, B.C. also had the highest number of new arrivals recorded in 60 years — 100,797 people. International migration was the second-highest recorded, while cross-country migration was the highest in nearly 30 years.

Even with that, and despite a seemingly intractable, affordable-housing crisis, the fact is B.C. needs more people to fill essential jobs.

And that is exactly why the provincial government wants Ottawa to give it more control over who comes here, and is asking for more money to help settle all the newcomers.

Last year, only 6,750 people came under the provincial nominee program that allows provinces to select applicants whose skills and training match labour needs. Next year, it wants 8,000 nominees, and 10,000 three years from now.

It made the request ahead of Thursday’s meeting of federal and provincial immigration ministers.

Nathan Cullen is B.C.’s municipal affairs minister and has responsibility for immigration. He describes the program as “more precise” than other immigration programs, noting that B.C.’s priority last year was health-care and long-term care workers.

“(The nominee program) is not a blunt instrument, which is what a federal immigration program is by its nature,” he told Postmedia before leaving for the federal-provincial meeting in New Brunswick.

“We’ve just heard from Ontario and they’ve been making similar requests of the feds to gain a little bit more control over what happens.”

As a former MP, Cullen isn’t certain how much of its “cherished authority” Ottawa is willing to give up. But he hopes to convince Federal Minister Sean Fraser that expanding the nominee program, which has a much faster turnaround time than myriad other immigration streams, will help clear the backlog of applications that is nearing two million files.

The benefit isn’t just a bureaucratic one. With skills matched to jobs, it should also mean that highly skilled newcomers don’t end up driving taxis instead of doing the jobs they are trained for.

Of course, there is a huge caveat that Cullen readily acknowledges. Canada is glacially slow in recognizing internationally obtained credentials — especially for physicians and surgeons. Here, he said it can take up to three times as long as in other G20 countries — “And if you’re slow in this kind of world, it means you just don’t get the person at all.”

The minister plans to raise that at Thursday’s meeting, along with concerns about what might best be described as Canada’s “do-it-yourself” immigration offer to Ukrainians.

Within days of the Russian invasion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered safe haven and a pathway to citizenship to all Ukrainians who could find their own way here.

“We’re not ready for them, and we need the feds to be,” Cullen said. “(Federal politicians) have had time. There’s no more excuses like, ‘It’s all happening so fast.’ That’s done. They’ve had the time and the program has not been set up properly yet.”

With the usual processes waived, Ukrainians are arriving and often there is no one to meet them. Nobody knows when they are coming, where they are landing, or even how many of the six million who have fled might end up here as Russia intensifies its attacks.

Earlier this year, B.C. shored up settlement societies with nearly $15 million because the number of immigrants and refugees arriving is beyond the capacity that Ottawa has funded them for. And last month, the province set up a hardship fund for Ukrainians offering up to $1,770 a month for a family of four.

Ukrainian-Canadians have also stepped in to fill the gaps since the only federal help Ukrainians get is a two-week housing allowance.

Still, with no contact point with any agency or government, vulnerable women, children and unaccompanied minors are open to exploitation. It’s something that keeps Cullen awake at night.

Already, his officials had to rescue one family who had found rental accommodation on social media. When they arrived, the landlord confiscated their passports and tried to restrict their movements. Fortunately, they had a contact in the Ukrainian community who got in touch with the ministry.

Meanwhile, immigrants are enduring months-long waits in overcrowded hotel rooms in dangerous neighbourhoods because there is nowhere else to go until settlement societies or concerned citizens manage to scrounge something better. Sometimes, it’s from developers waiting for demolition permits.

Cullen insists that recent increases in housing starts and measures his government has taken to get unused housing into the rental pool is starting to make a difference. But he said it is still going to take more time to even out.

Immigrants also need health care and schools for their children. Those, too, are provincial costs.

So far, the federal government has failed to match its immigration promises and targets with the money necessary to properly fulfill them.

Small wonder that the provinces want more control and more money.

“We have to match the story we want to tell about ourselves as being a generous, open country … with the resources and the determination that’s required,” Cullen said.

And right now? That’s not happening.

Source: Daphne Bramham: With Canada failing to meet its immigration promises, B.C. needs more control

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BC MLA aims to address birth tourism as new data shows high non-resident birth rates

2018/12/01 Leave a comment

Given that most actions to curb the practice require at a minimum provincial cooperation if not collaboration, something to watch:

A new study came out last week suggesting the number of “anchor babies” in Canada, especially in Richmond, is much higher than previously expected, and MLA Jas Johal [Liberal, from Richmond] said he will introduce a petition to the B.C. government to “address the problem.”

An anchor baby is a term used to refer to a child born to a non-citizen mother at the time of the child’s birth in a country that has birthright citizenship.

Policy Options magazine published a new study last Thursday from the Institute for Research on Public Policy, suggesting every year, there are 1,500 to 2,000 “anchor babies” born in Canada.

Among all the hospitals in Canada, Richmond Hospital has the highest volume of babies born to non-resident mothers – 469 last year, taking up Richmond’s number of such births to 21.9 per cent of the total births in the hospital.

“I’m glad this national organization was able to shed light on this issue. It acknowledges for the first time everything everyone suspected and builds on the reporting the Richmond News has done,” said Johal.

“Every level of government has to acknowledge the issue and work together. We can’t just be polite Canadians and not deal with it. It has nothing to do with political correctness, but got everything to do with our healthcare system, for and by Canadians. Period.”

Johal said he is very concerned about the birth tourism industry, which “is not only allowed to exist, but to flourish.” He is working with some local residents to put together a petition, which he will introduce to the province in spring.

“There is a whole industry built on marketing these practices, attracting these individuals, housing these individuals, making sure they get proper medical treatment and care services,” said Johal.

“What are the companies being set up to bring these women here? How much do they charge? What’s the money they make? We need to shine some sunlight into an industry that’s being done in the shadows.

“And there is cost to taxpayers. I know they pay for natural birth and C-section, but the potential capacity could be used for somewhere else in the health care system in Richmond.”

The petition, according to Johal, will ask the provincial government to acknowledge that birth tourism exists and have a public say that the government does not support it.

“It will also ask the government to take concrete measures, to eliminate or very much reduce the practice,” he said.

Johal said as an immigrant moving from India when he was little, this issue upsets him on the personal level.

“I value the Canadian passport more than anything in my life, but this fundamentally debases the value of Canadian citizenship,” said Johal.

Source: MLA aims to address birth tourism as new data shows high non-resident birth rates 

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Douglas Todd: Why the Greens don’t attract ‘ethnic’ voters

2018/06/16 Leave a comment

Interesting. There may be differences between first and subsequent generations:

Why do Green party candidates only win seats in ridings where the vast majority of voters are white?

Federal and B.C. Green candidates have won election in only one concentrated region of Canada, on Vancouver Island and the adjacent Southern Gulf Islands, in ridings that have scant visible minorities compared to most of the country’s cities.

In the Southern Gulf Islands — the heart of the region that has handed victories to the lone federal Green MP, leader Elizabeth May, and to B.C. MLA Adam Olsen — only two per cent of residents belong to a minority ethnic group. That compares to 51 per cent of people in Metro Vancouver, where the Greens struggle.

Political observers believe the Greens’ poor showing among immigrants, ethnic Chinese and South Asian voters, and others, is the result of a common perception the party puts environmental protection before economic prosperity. The Greens have also had fewer resources to woo ethnic voters.

“The first generation of immigrants often leave their homelands for economic reasons,” says Shinder Purewal, a Kwantlen Polytechnic University political scientist. “They’re willing to work in any sector that provides jobs. Early Sikh immigrants, for instance, worked in the lumber industry. Environmentalists calling for preservation of trees were often seen as a threat to their livelihood.”

Purewal routinely hears Indo-Canadians remark on how “the Greens would destroy the economy. Not only do they think this would mean lower living standards, it would lead to the state not being able to provide social programs. … Immigrants, who come from countries with almost no social programs, appreciate Canada’s health care and public education, along with workers’ compensation, employment insurance and old age pensions.”

Regardless of which factors are strongest, it’s clear that visible minorities in Canada, many of whom are immigrants, are far less inclined to vote Green than are whites. Along with Green candidates drastically under-performing in ridings in which ethnic groups predominate, polls have revealed the party’s demographic affliction.

A Mainstreet Research poll conducted last year found 21 per cent of Caucasian British Columbians were ready to vote for the Greens. But support for the Greens dropped to eight per cent among ethnic Chinese in B.C., seven per cent among South Asians, 10 per cent among Filipinos and five per cent among Koreans.

The so-called ethnic vote is a major factor in B.C. elections, since at least one in five provincial ridings contains fewer white people than the combined totals of ethnic Chinese, South Asians, Koreans, Filipinos, Koreans, Persians and Pakistanis.

Most people of Chinese origin in B.C. “are still under the impression that economic development and environmental protection are incompatible, or even mutually exclusive,” says Fenella Sung, former radio host of a Chinese-language current affairs program in B.C.

The more than 470,000 ethnic Chinese people in Metro Vancouver, who predominate in ridings in Richmond where the Greens performed badly in last year’s B.C. election, tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Greens are a single-issue party, Sung said.

“Since prosperity is their main priority, they think the environment can take a back seat,” Sung said. Chinese-Canadians generally believe protecting nature is something to be addressed only “after economic growth is sustained and job creation is guaranteed.”

Sonia Furstenau, the B.C. Greens’ deputy leader, said, “We’re really committed to improving the diversity of our candidates. It’s a real priority.”

The party is stepping up its message to ethnic minorities and others that protecting the environment does not threaten personal livelihoods, but will help create “more stable, long-term jobs than we have now,” said Furstenau, MLA for Cowichan Valley, where nine of 10 report English as their mother tongue, the fourth highest proportion of B.C.’s 87 ridings. The Greens, she said, also want to strengthen public education and the high-tech sector.

Stefan Jonnson, communications director for the three-seat B.C. Greens, which is supporting the NDP government, said up until recently most candidates in the small party have lacked finances to publish Chinese- or Punjabi-language campaign material or to appear at ethnic events. But that, he said, has been rapidly changing.

Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley, said the Greens “have to become a multicultural party if they’re going to break out of Vancouver Island. It’s not a party that speaks to immigrants.”

The tip of Vancouver Island and the Southern Gulf Islands are Green strongholds in part, Telford said, because they’re home to many Caucasians who have moved there from others parts of the province and country “to retire and enjoy the beauty of the place, the peace and outdoors.”

After travelling to the Punjab in India, the homeland of hundreds of thousands of B.C. residents, Telford was strengthened in his perception that “Punjabis are a very political people.” While Sikh and Hindu nationalist parties are notable in the Punjab, he said, there are few signs of an environmental movement.

Since roughly a quarter of the students in Telford’s classrooms on the Abbotsford campus are South Asian, he has learned many are keen about economics, immigration, racism and social programs.

But hope for the Greens may lie in such students, he said. “The ones born and raised here tend to skew to the left and to have the same concerns as other young Canadians. Some are interested in the Greens. That’s not so much the case for the older generations.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Why the Greens don’t attract ‘ethnic’ voters

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Quebec immigrant program increases in popularity … with ‘downsides’ for B.C. | Vancouver Sun

2016/07/13 Leave a comment

Ongoing coverage and controversy. I agree with the critics:

The Quebec government, running a cash-for-visa program labelled a “fraud” and “scam” by critics who say it hurts British Columbia, received a record-breaking number of rich immigrants in 2015.

The 40-per-cent increase took place a year after the former Conservative federal government complained that the program’s harms outweighed its benefits and shut down an identical national investor-luring scheme.

Quebec has autonomy to select its own immigrants under a 1991 accord with the federal government, so decided to continue its own program.

Critics, including Conservative MP Jason Kenney when he was immigration minister, have complained that the vast majority of investor immigrants are wealthy Asians who dishonestly declare an intention to live in Quebec, then move immediately, to Toronto and, especially, to Vancouver.

Quebec gets the financial benefits of the program while Metro Vancouver gets inflated housing prices and added stress on the public education and health care systems, the critics argue.

The latest evidence of Quebec’s growing enthusiasm for luring millionaire migrants prompted criticism of the B.C. government, which hasn’t been vocal on the issue despite allegations that the program has played a role in Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.

“The silence from the B.C. government has been absolutely startling,” said New Democratic Party MLA David Eby.

“In effect, they are content with a program that brings major housing affordability problems, while allowing many wealthy migrants to use British Columbia’s social services virtually for free.”

Jobs Minister Shirley Bond said in a statement Friday that Victoria has “consistently” raised its concerns with Ottawa about the need for additional settlement funding to offset the cost of “secondary migration” when immigrants land somewhere else but then head straight to the West Coast.
“We are in active conversations with the federal government,” she said, noting that Quebec has had the authority for decades to select its own immigrants.

The total number of applicants and their family members admitted under the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program reached just over 5,000 last year.

That compares with 2014’s total of 3,669. The previous high was 4,436 in 2012.

Quebec says it will bring in roughly the same number in 2016, according to the province’s immigration plan tabled recently in the Quebec National Assembly.

The former Conservative government, while initially enthusiastic about the program, soon questioned its value and sharply reduced national admissions from an average of around 9,200 in 2008-2010 to 3,787 in its final year of 2014.

When the Tories shut down the program in 2014 they said the program’s costs far outweighed the benefits for Canadian — and especially B.C. — taxpayers.

Quebec’s enthusiasm during this period soared, from a little over 1,000 in 2008 to five times that annual total now.

Kenney, who said applicants misrepresenting themselves in their applications were engaged in “a crime” and “fraud” in 2013,  was unable to get bureaucrats to take action before he was shuffled out of the ministry later that year.

The only positive economic spin-off Eby said that he’s witnessed in his Vancouver-Point Grey riding, the focus of Vancouver’s housing price explosion, is the opening of a Ferrari dealership.

“Apart from that, it’s hard to figure out what benefit we see in British Columbia for this program. And the downsides are profound.”

Simon Fraser University professor Joshua Gordon, author of a recent report on Vancouver’s housing crisis, said every British Columbian who hears about the Quebec program is “appalled,” and yet the Clark government “won’t go to bat” for them.

“The absence of any public pressure from the B.C. government on the feds or Quebec to end the program is revealing about the way the Clark government thinks about the housing issue,” Gordon said Friday.

“What this suggests is that the Clark government’s strategy is to continue to fuel the housing bubble, since they realize it’s the main economic game in town, and hope that equity windfalls for boomers will get them re-elected — and that the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down.”

A spokesman for the Quebec immigration ministry, meanwhile, said Friday that his province didn’t jump in to increase its intake as a result of Ottawa’s departure from the field.

Quebec has actually reduced the number of applications it has accepted in recent years, from 2,138 in 2013 to 1,278 in 2015, according to Jonathan Lavallee. He indicated the recent bump had to do with a processing backlog in the federal system — a contention that Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland supports.

The Quebec government has also acknowledged the leakage problem, saying in a 2014 discussion paper that only a “small minority” choose to settle in Quebec for the long term.

Kurland praised Quebec’s recent efforts to retain more rich immigrants. One such measure gives preferential treatment to French-speakers.

The federal figures don’t break down the source countries for the immigrants through the investor program. However, the Quebec government says 89 per cent of its investor immigrants this year will come from Asia.

The Quebec investor program, for a net cost that Kurland pegs at $125,000, allows wealthy foreigners jump to the front of the immigration queue even if they didn’t speak a word of English or French.

Federal Immigration Minister John McCallum said in a recent interview that he has no intention of challenging Quebec on its immigration policy, and a departmental spokeswoman said the province has every right under a 1991 Canada-Quebec accord to set its immigration policy.

Kurland said Canada has the authority to shut down Quebec’s program if it has the political will to annoy a province in which Trudeau holds 40 of 78 seats.

And he challenged the common assertion that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees mobility rights, prevents authorities from forcing newly arrived permanent residents to stay in Quebec after arrival.

He noted that all charter rights are subjected to Section 1 of the 1982 Constitution Act, which says all rights can be circumscribed by “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Kurland, who believes B.C. should set up its own investor program, said a court could be convinced that it is “reasonable” to insist that newcomers stay in the province they declared an intent to live in for their first two years in Canada.

That could be enforced by requiring successful applicants to forfeit the entire $800,000 investment if they move before that time.

“The Charter has a two-part test. A breach of rights is not the end of the debate.”

Ian Young, the South China Morning Post’s Vancouver correspondent, echoed Kenney’s harsh assessment in a column last week.

“It is a money-grubbing prank perpetrated upon Vancouver by Quebec,” Young said. “It is a scam, and it needs to stop.”

Source: Quebec immigrant program increases in popularity … with ‘downsides’ for B.C. | Vancouver Sun

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Premier Clark apologizes for B.C.’s historical wrongs against Chinese immigrants

2014/05/17 Leave a comment

A reminder of the power of an apology (without admitting legal liability) for the Chinese Canadian community in healing old wounds:

Shui Lee endured decades of intolerance and racism in Canada just because he is Chinese, but on Thursday the 58-year-old restaurant owner said he is finally proud to be both Canadian and Chinese.

With tears in his eyes and holding the 1914 head-tax document belonging to his great, great grandfather, Lee described what British Columbia’s formal apology for racist and discriminatory government policies against Chinese immigrants means to him.

“When I walk out this door today, I feel so proud that I can put my head up and I tell everybody I’m proud to be Canadian,” he said. “I can be proud to be Chinese.”

Lee, a Kelowna, B.C., restaurant owner, said he often argued with friends, relatives and others about what he considered Canada’s racist and intolerant laws and policies towards Chinese immigrants, but was told not to rock the boat.

“They don’t want to apologize to you,” he said he was told. “But I prove it today, they are wrong. The government did apologize to us. And they admit they were wrong.”

Much like the federal government’s Chinese Head Tax ex gratis payments and historical recognition program, or PM Harper’s apology to First Nations for residential schools, recognition of the past helps reconciliation in the present and future. While challenging to governments, particularly which communities are recognized and which not, the old hard-line approach of earlier Liberal governments that we do not apologize for what happened in the past does not address this need.

Of course, the more organized the community, the better the chance for some form of historical recognition. Democracy in action.

Clark apologizes for B.C.’s historical wrongs against Chinese immigrants – The Globe and Mail.

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Under new rules, rich Chinese should learn French if they want to move to Canada | South China Morning Post

2014/04/22 Leave a comment

One of the perverse consequences of Quebec continuing its business immigration program while the rest of Canada has suspended it. Never liked this “buy a visa” approach and government officials are basically poor at assessing entrepreneurial and business skills:

Whether or not the language exemption is abused matters to Vancouver, since 89 per cent of all investor immigrants supposedly bound for Quebec end up living elsewhere in Canada. Assuming the dispersal rate under the federal scheme holds true for these immigrants too, that means about 59 per cent of all Quebec investor immigrants actually end up living in Vancouver.

As with the axed federal scheme, Chinese millionaires dominate Quebec’s investor immigration scheme, making up 71 per cent of 2012’s applicants.

This habit of rich Chinese to quickly flee their new “home” of Quebec has not gone unnoticed.

In testimony to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Official Languages last June, then Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was scathing.

“I think there is some skimming going on in the programme, whereby Quebec is taking the money of immigrant investors and using it, but the British Columbia taxpayers must pay the price for the social services provided to immigrants selected by Quebec,” Kenney said.

Under new rules, rich Chinese should learn French if they want to move to Canada | South China Morning Post.

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SUCCESS admits mistake in posting Chinese-only signs | Vancouver Sun

2014/03/20 Leave a comment

A controversy has erupted in Richmond over Chinese-language only advertising aimed at reducing gambling among Chinese-speaking Canadians. This is not the first flare-up of language issues (McDonald’s customer alleges language discrimination – British Columbia) and reminds us of the balance between serving new Canadians in an effective way (where use of other languages plays an important role), targeting communities in need, but not doing so exclusively that it alienates the “mainstream.”

I don’t share the view that targeted programs necessarily present the kind of ethical issue presented below as long as other general programs and support are available. If we are too universal, we may be less effective. But the signs should have a short description of the program in English to avoid such issues.

This is a fascinating ethical issue. Since SUCCESS is mostly funded by the B.C. and federal governments, it means that taxpayers are supporting an organization that explicitly excludes non-Chinese-speaking people from participation — since they wouldn’t be able to read the signs.

It is ethical that this program to fight addiction is only for those who speak Chinese?

SUCCESS admits mistake in posting Chinese-only signs | Vancouver Sun.

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