BC Asia-Pacific curriculum aims to bring international perspective to high schools

Good initiative and will be interesting to see how it develops and how it deals with more controversial historical issues in the region:

B.C. schools will be the first in Canada to get Asia-related curriculum material to teach in history and socials classes through a new program that may eventually be rolled out nationwide.

The Asia-Pacific Curriculum, a $500,000 pilot program funded by the Asia Pacific Foundation and the province, launched Thursday with a website that contains teaching material to be incorporated into classes for Grades 6 through 12.

The program will also provide workshops for educators to help them teach children more effectively about understanding cultures and issues in various countries across the Pacific.

“There is very little that’s more important to the future well-being of British Columbians over the next 10 to 20 years than our people’s ability to deal with Asia,” said Asia Pacific Foundation chairman David Emerson. “You can see from recent and historic events that our relationship with the United States will always be very important, but it’s volatile. And when you think long-term, inter-generational benefits and the need for B.C. to economically diversify, there’s no market that’s going to be more important than the Asian market.”

Currently, the asiapacificcurriculum.ca website features profiles on South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and India, as well as two key topics — China’s one-child policy and a history of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The topics were chosen after consultation with the B.C. Social Studies Teachers Association, said Eva Busza, vice-president of research and programs at the Asia Pacific Foundation.

Busza noted that teachers want topics with a link to current events — China’s one-child policy was recently loosened after decades of strict enforcement, while the Khmer Rouge issue highlights how to deal with reconciliation, a topical point of discussion for Canadians.

Engaging teachers on what to include in the curriculum is crucial, she added, because the program is voluntary.

“Teachers have indicated to us that they want this information, and that they see this as a gap (in the current curriculum),” Busza said. “We wanted to make sure they own this work, so we’ll be doing a lot of work with the teachers in the summer, before these modules are launched in the classroom, so that their comfort level with the material is high.”

Future topics will include a history of the ongoing territorial disputes over certain islands in Northeast Asia, as well as recent controversies around South Korean textbooks. Program officials said they hope to extend the program beyond high school, and across Canada.

Brenda Ball, senior school director at North Vancouver’s Brockton School and a social studies teacher, noted that there had been a gap in Asia-Pacific studies in B.C.’s high school curriculum, but much of that has been addressed with the new provincial curriculum being implemented now.

The key for the success of the new program, Ball said, is accessibility for the teachers who want it.

“I grew up in an era where I was being taught history that was predominantly Euro-centric, and some of the publications used are still fairly Euro-centric. The only way we can make that change is if we have access to the new material.

“I think the more material, the better. And having access to free material is always welcomed by teachers, because money isn’t always endlessly available.”

Surrey Muslim School principal (and former social studies teacher) Ebrahim Bawa said his school has already begun adopting portions of the material appropriate for younger students at the K-7 institution. He urged organizers to expand the program to elementary schools as early as possible.

“If you can adapt it down to the elementary level, it is something that — especially in the Lower Mainland — a lot of kids will be able to relate to, because of the large Asia-Pacific population,” Bawa said. “If the program is marked well — if you notify the individual school principals, because they will be the ones setting the direction for the schools — this would have a higher uptake than if you leave it to individual teachers.”

Source: BC Asia-Pacific curriculum aims to bring international perspective to high schools | Vancouver Sun

Despite uproar over Trinity Western, many B.C. Christian school policies bar LGBTQ teachers | National Post

Open question whether this form of discrimination in religious schools is compatible with continuing to receive public funding:

While the debate over Trinity Western University’s community covenant rages on through the courts and the media, many Christian elementary and high schools that receive B.C. government funding are quietly operating with similar policies that essentially bar gay and lesbian teachers from employment.

The independent schools all belong to the Society of Christian Schools in B.C. (SCSBC), which requires each of its 31 member schools to draft “community standards policies” for employees to follow. The suggested language includes refraining from all sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage.

Several members of the society have posted policies that include these restrictions online, including schools in Abbotsford, Surrey, Langley, Nanaimo, and Houston. These policies also tend to include prohibitions on things like public drunkenness and watching porn.

“What a terrible message,” said former Vancouver school trustee Patti Bacchus. “Something like that, it just goes backwards. It’s flat-out discrimination and a violation of someone’s human rights.”

Ed Noot, the executive director of the SCSBC, is overseas and declined to answer questions by email.

Canadian legal precedent largely falls on the side of protecting the rights of religious schools to set their own policies, as long as they’re made in good faith and based on honestly-held religious beliefs. The defining Supreme Court of Canada case dates back to 1984, when the justices ruled in favour of a Vancouver Catholic school that fired a teacher after she married a divorced man.

The B.C. Court of Appeal followed that line of thinking when its panel of five judges ruled in favour of TWU establishing a law school, calling the B.C. Law Society’s attempt to deny the school accreditation on the basis of its discriminatory covenant a well-intentioned act carried out in an “intolerant and illiberal” manner.

That case will likely end up in the country’s highest court, and there are those who say it’s time for a change in direction.

Vancouver lawyer and queer activist Barbara Findlay believes that freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination are both essential rights, but she has strong feelings about how these rights should be balanced.

“I say that your right to freedom of religion ends where you want me to do something. My right to be free from discrimination can only exist if your right to freedom of religion is not allowed to trump it,” findlay said.

“I’m hoping that this question will be definitively settled in the Trinity Western case when it heads to the Supreme Court.”

This fall, Education Minister Mike Bernier announced that all public and private schools in B.C. would have to include protections for LGBTQ students in their anti-bullying policies, and choked up as he remembered the difficulties his lesbian daughter faced in school. Meanwhile, the province’s new curriculum asks teachers to ensure their lessons support inclusion and diversity, including “diversity in family compositions and gender orientation.”

In an emailed statement, the education ministry stressed that “We believe in safe, respecting and inclusive schools.” But the statement also pointed out that Canada’s Human Rights Act allows certain schools to discriminate if their primary purpose is promoting the interest of a religious group. Most independent school authorities in B.C. meet the requirements for that, according to the ministry.

Source: Despite uproar over Trinity Western, many B.C. Christian school policies bar LGBTQ teachers | National Post

Glass ceiling still in place for British Columbia public sector employees

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the perspective), there is no equivalent federal ‘sunshine list’ on all public sector salaries.

british-columbia-public-service-2011

However, we do have data on federal Deputy and Assistant Deputy Ministers (for women, 2016 baseline 37.6 percent women and 4.7 percent visible minorities for deputies, 40.8 and 7.2 percent for ADMs). DM appointments by the current government are close to gender parity at 46.9 percent women.

My analysis of GiC appointments showed less representation of women and visible minorities, and a similar gap to British Columbia between senior and junior appointments for crown corporations and administrative tribunals:

GiC Baseline 2016.014

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have introduced a gender-balanced cabinet “because it’s 2015,” but that equality does not extend to public servants in B.C., where the vast majority of the highest-paid employees are men.

An analysis of The Sun’s exclusive public sector salary database reveals that of the 200 highest-paid public employees in B.C., during 2014 or the 2014-15 fiscal year, 70 per cent were men and 30 per cent were women. That increases to 77 per cent male when the field is narrowed to the top 100 (By contrast, 94 of the 100 highest-paid corporate executives in 2015 were men, according to Business in Vancouver.)

“There’s an old saying: the higher, the fewer, with respect to women,” said Barbara Arneil, head of the University of B.C.’s political science department. “We have what I think are structural, systemic reasons why women are not reaching the top of their profession, whether that is in the university, whether that’s in government, whether that’s in the private sector. And we’re wasting very good resources.”

Search The Sun’s exclusive public sector salary database.

The Sun analyzed the top 200 public-sector earners in this year’s database, which contains salary information for nearly 77,000 employees, and the top 50 earners in six of the seven sectors: B.C. government, Crown corporations, health authorities, local government, school districts, and colleges and universities. The Sun did not include municipal police in this analysis because forces generally withhold many names to protect undercover officers. The Sun relied on first names for this gender analysis, checking Internet profiles in cases where only a first initial was provided or the name was ambiguous.

The gender divide is most pronounced at colleges and universities, where men represented 41 of the top 50 earners, or 82 per cent, in the 2014-15 fiscal year. But because the University of B.C. accounts for 45 of the top 50 highest-paid employees in the sector in the province, these findings really only reflect that institution. At the University of Victoria, for example, five of the 10 highest-paid employees are women.

Pay equity is an issue UBC takes seriously, university spokeswoman Susan Danard said in an emailed statement.

“Compensation is affected by several factors, including the depth of experience and accomplishment that a faculty or staff member brings with them when they are first hired, and the length of employment with UBC, with people paid more as they progress in their careers,” she said. Faculty and area of specialization are also factors that affect pay equity, she said, noting specialists and top doctors in the faculty of medicine are often the highest paid given the demands and complexity of their jobs.

Source: Glass ceiling still in place for public sector employees | Vancouver Sun

Daphne Bramham picks up on issue:

Canada’s failure is in providing women the opportunities to fully participate in the economy. Not only does Canada lag the Nordic countries, it trails countries like the United States, Namibia, Mongolia, Belarus, Thailand and Burundi.

It’s because women don’t have equal opportunities, Canada’s overall gender ranking dropped to 30th in 2015, down 11 places from 2014.

Among the more troubling findings in the Sun’s gender analysis of B.C. public-sector wages is that the 25 universities and colleges have the fewest women in top-paid positions — only nine among the top 50. Of those, five work at the University of British Columbia.

The excuses/reasons are the usual ones. Prime career-building years coincide with the prime reproductive years and Canadian mothers continue to bear the largest share of the caregiving for both children and aging parents.

Even though 58 per cent of these institutions’ graduates are women, missing are the supports for those young women to succeed in academe. It’s all the more disappointing because post-secondary institutions are supposed to be places of innovation and change, not laggards.

What’s not surprising is that the health services authorities account for the most women on the top-earners’ list with 59; 35 of whom are at the Provincial Health Services Authority.

For more than a decade, the majority of medical school graduates have been women. Among the professionals in the B.C. government, women account for nearly 90 per cent of the nurses and nutritionists and three-quarters of the social workers and counsellors.

But that may be change for the worse because catching up wage-wise isn’t as simple as more women working in traditionally male jobs. When women do that, the pay scale drops. That’s what sociologist Paula England at New York University concluded after analyzing U.S. census data from 1950 to 2000.

When biologists went from being predominately men to women, England found that wages fell 18 percentage points (even accounting for changed value of the dollar over time). When workers in parks and camps went from mostly men to mostly women, the median hourly wages dropped 57 percentage points.

It’s because when women do the work, England told the New York Times, “It just doesn’t look like it’s as important to the bottom line or requires as much skill.”

Daphne Bramham: Few women in B.C. public sector’s top ranks, …

Chinese K-12 students a booming demographic for B.C. schools

While from an integration perspective, earlier arrival generally means better results, it is telling how strategic some Chinese parents are, and how market-oriented some private schools are:

The average age of Chinese students arriving in B.C. and Canada is dropping dramatically as growing numbers of international K-12 pupils, not just college students, are enrolling in local schools.

According to a monthly report published by Canadian immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, there is a demographic shift occurring in the kind of student visas being processed by Canada’s embassy in Beijing. Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 students made up 37 per cent of all study permits issued in China last year, a sharp rise from 18 per cent just six years ago. In B.C., there were 1,094 Chinese students enrolled in K-12 in 2009; by 2014, that figure had quadrupled to 4,306.

Kurland says the statistics suggest a shift in the thinking of Chinese families about how to get their children — and perhaps themselves — Canadian residency. He pointed to recent changes in Canadian immigration law that make “Express Entry” a lottery system for international college students, causing Chinese families to seek ways to improve their chances.

“It used to be, if you are from China, and you are in Canada on a college study permit, you had an excellent chance of gaining residency,” Kurland said. “They may have had to wait, but students could say, ‘I know I’m in.’

“The new system threw all of that predictability and transparency out the window. It didn’t make sense to gamble $30,000 to $40,000 a year (on college) if the goal was permanent residence.”

Experts say sending students to Canada at a younger age speeds integration into Canadian society and improves their chances for residency in a number of ways. Kurland speculates that Ottawa may already be looking at changes to give residency preference to students who graduated from Canadian elementary and secondary schools. But there are other reasons why parents are sending their children to B.C. earlier.

Huichen Li, 26, has first-hand experience.

“I have asthma, so my parents thought coming here would be better for my health,” said Li, who is currently president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s campus in Richmond. “We thought we could get adjusted earlier by coming earlier.”

Li arrived in Canada as a Grade 10 student and attended North Vancouver’s Bodwell High School, a private international boarding school. He lived in a dorm for a year before his parents followed him.

Randall Martin, executive director of the B.C. Council for International Education, said China’s previous “One-Child Policy” put a lot of pressure on many families’ only child. If a child has the responsibility of possibly supporting all family members as they age, going abroad early can be very important, he said.

“Basically, a child has six guardians: two parents and four grandparents,” Martin said. “Ultimately, the sense from the families is that — if the state can’t support those six people — that one child has to. … And if you’ve got one child, you want the best for his or her health, and that’s not going to be in a major city in China. With the ability of all these relatives to support a student going abroad, it’s almost a no-brainer.”

The enormous market also means many B.C. schools actively court Chinese K-12 students, which concerns some in the industry.

Paul Romani, founder of Vancouver’s Pear Tree Elementary, said his school accepts very few international students, and charges all students similar fees. But many other institutions charge significantly higher fees for international students, giving administrators an incentive to go after more Chinese students, he noted.

“There are some private schools in B.C. that are increasingly exploiting the higher fees charged for international students, as well as the unbelievably generous ‘donations’ … which few B.C. families could ever compete with,” Romani said.

Source: Chinese K-12 students a booming demographic for B.C. schools | Vancouver Sun

British Columbia Imposes Citizenship Disclosure for Home Buyers – Bloomberg Business

Long overdue. The lack of data hampers knowing what, if any, policy response is needed:

British Columbia will require home buyers to disclose their citizenship to help the government monitor foreign ownership and address a housing boom that has made Vancouver one of the least affordable cities in the world.

Proposed changes to the property transfer tax will enable the government to collect information on property buyers, including their citizenship status and whether they hold the property as bare trustees. Bare trusts are typically used for real-estate assets and pass taxes and benefits directly to the beneficiary.

“We think it’s time to start collecting again,” Finance Minister Michael de Jong said in a briefing in Victoria. “At least we’ll be in a position to aggregate the information and provide data for the public discussion.”

The measures are meant to provide more transparency in the country’s hottest real-estate market. Prices in Vancouver are the highest in Canada, topping C$1.3 million ($940 million) for a detached home in January, a 28 percent rise over the prior year, according to that city’s real estate board, with sales up 32 percent in that period.

More transparency is not meant to slow investment from abroad, de Jong said. The province will continue to spend taxpayer money to promote the province as an investment destination.

Source: British Columbia Imposes Citizenship Disclosure for Home Buyers – Bloomberg Business

B.C. Sikh community rallies in support of Syrian refugees

Good vignette:

The Sikh community in B.C.’s Lower Mainland is rallying to provide support for thousands of incoming Syrian refugees, with offers this week that include food, transportation and even private school for children.

Randeep Sarai, MP for Surrey Centre, convened a meeting over the weekend where roughly 30 community representatives immediately offered a variety goods and services. The federal government will announce details of its Syrian refugee plan on Tuesday, but – if past distribution models are used – B.C. is projected to receive between 2,500 and 3,500 refugees in the next couple of months.

Community organizer Balwant Sanghera, who attended the meeting, said Gurdwaras from Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminster, Abbotsford and Surrey have all agreed to collect food, clothing, blankets and other donations from their congregations. They also plan to launch a provincewide campaign to find free accommodations for the refugees.

“We are very proud to be Canadians and we are also proud of our heritage,” Mr. Sanghera said. “We feel really good if we can be of any help if we are needed.”

Source: B.C. Sikh community rallies in support of Syrian refugees – The Globe and Mail

A forgotten history: tracing the ties between B.C.’s First Nations and Chinese workers

A fascinating piece on the early history of Chinese in Canada:

Before the railway, before British Columbia joined Confederation, many Chinese were already here. They were farming, mining and logging. They arrived by the hundreds starting in 1858 at the start of the gold rush, and Henry Yu, a professor of history at the University of B.C., says some arrived almost 200 years ago on what is now Vancouver Island. To succeed and survive, the Chinese forged relationships with the province’s First Nations who also faced extreme discrimination by the white colonists.

“The Chinese dealt in reciprocal ways with First Nations. They didn’t take, they asked. They brought gifts, they shared foods. They did relationship-building,” said Prof. Yu, who is now helping the provincial government on a project that will see a string of Chinese historic sites in the province officially preserved and recognized.

An estimated 15,000 Chinese men worked on the railway in B.C. in the 1880s. They were paid half the wages of the white workers, got no medical care and were typically assigned the most dangerous jobs. Once the work was complete, the European settlers sought to drive the Chinese workers out of the province with a race-based Head Tax. The Chinese were regarded as the temporary foreign workers of their time – with the last spike in place, they were no longer wanted here.

“There is a long history that has been distorted, deliberately suppressed, or erased,” said Prof. Yu.

The most concrete remnants of that history are found on the banks of the Fraser River. There, the Chinese built elaborate gold-mining operations among the First Nations communities. Sometimes, the men stayed and married into those communities.

Bill Chu, founder of the Canadians For Reconciliation Society, and Bill Paul, a member of the Lytton First Nation, look over the remains of a metal band used on wooden steam trunk on the banks of the Fraser River. (John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)

The Sto:lo people have their place names that mark this shared history. “Sxwóxwiymelh” is a place where a large number of Chinese railway workers died of the flu. They call the rolling hills opposite the mouth of the Coquihalla River “Lexwpopeleqwith’aim” – it means “always screech owls” but the word took on a dual meaning as a reference to the ghosts of Chinese workers who are said to haunt the area where many were killed during a blasting accident.

Mr. Chu is an accidental, amateur historian of British Columbia, drawn into the stories of the early Chinese railway workers and gold miners through his activism on behalf of Canada’s First Nations. He came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1974. As a newcomer, he knew nothing about the role of the Chinese in building this province.

“We are not all ‘new Canadians’ – we are as old as this province,” Mr. Chu said. Travelling up and down the Fraser Canyon, Mr. Chu has gathered stories of the Chinese railway workers kept by Sto:lo elders and others. He has visited many of the gold-mining operations that are still evident. “We are learning the history of this country from the mouths of its indigenous people,” he noted.

A forgotten history: tracing the ties between B.C.’s First Nations and Chinese workers – The Globe and Mail.

Many older Canadian immigrants live on less than $11,000 per year

Some of the challenges facing older refugees:

Immigrants and refugees who come to Canada later in life face unique challenges in terms of income, livelihood and social integration, said Chris Friesen, director of settlement services for the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. The problems are especially acute for seniors who are not from one of the region’s larger ethnocultural communities, such as Chinese, Indian or Filipino, where larger social networks are in place. They represent a small but growing share of immigrants to B.C. and Canada, Friesen said.

“The new and few, we call them.”

On Tuesday, Khaleghi and other immigrant seniors will have the chance to share their stories with key decision-makers and recommend changes to help others like them. The forum, called Moving Forward: Unheard Voices, will include representatives of city governments, health authorities, Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the B.C. Seniors Advocate, among others.

Recent policy changes have made things more difficult for immigrant seniors, who typically come to Canada either as sponsored family members or refugees, Friesen said. Citizenship and Immigration Canada recently increased the amount of time families must commit to financially supporting relatives to 20 years from 10 years, which means that only the wealthiest families are able to be reunited on a permanent basis. On the refugee side, Canada now selects people based on need of protection versus ability to settle.

“All these things are colliding together that impact the livelihood and life and dignity of these folks as they age in Canada,” Friesen said. “What was kind of an eye opener for me is, if you arrive at 65 and you have no financial means, your baseline entitlement is under $11,000 (per year) that you have to live on. On top that, if you’re a refugee, not only is it less than $11,000 but you also have to repay your transportation loan that provided you the opportunity to come to Canada.”

Many older Canadian immigrants live on less than $11,000 per year.

Millions for immigrant services in B.C. went unspent

This has been a long-standing issue:

The draft report, called Lessons Learned Study: British Columbia’s Contribution to Settlement and Immigration 1998-2013, appears to explain why the federal government stripped authority to run the program from the province effective April 1, 2014, said Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

“It certainly justifies it,” said Kurland, who obtained the document through the Access to Information Act.

The report noted that B.C. officials were “less than effective” in presenting financial information, and “significant amounts were not accounted for.” It also noted that the federal government did not do an adequate job of ensuring B.C. gave a full account of how the funds were spent.

“(Citizenship and Immigration Canada) officials had ongoing concerns regarding consistent lapsed funds, accountability and access to (program) evaluation findings. C.I.C. also had questions related to B.C. serving non-eligible clients such as Canadian citizens and temporary foreign workers.”

The report said B.C. officials had indicated that the funding for non-immigrants and non-refugees came from B.C.’s contribution to immigrant settlement coffers, which generally totalled eight to 10 per cent of the entire federal-provincial settlement budget.

“While B.C. noted that ineligible clients were served with provincial funds, it was not always clear for C.I.C. officials if this was in fact the case,” the report said.

…The transfer back to federal government control has been a “huge transition” for the sector, Friesen said.

“Under the provincial government … the focus of the relationship was on the services to clients, the output. We had greater flexibility … to be able to move funds around to address gaps in services,” Friesen said.

“The funding regime is very, very different under the federal government with far more focus on the financial management than necessarily on the service side. … You could say it was the opposite under the provincial government.”

Millions for immigrant services in B.C. went unspent.

Most Chinese and South Asians in B.C. report discrimination

Regional survey on discrimination in British Columbia. Consistent with other polling and equivalent:

Insights West found 28 per cent of the Chinese and South Asian British Columbians who answered the online poll said they had “frequently” or “sometimes” lost a potential employment opportunity because of their ethnicity. Another 24 per cent claim to have been treated unfairly in the workplace.

Chinese and South Asians who were older than 55 were the most likely to say theyve experienced unfairness on the job.South Asians 28 per cent were also more likely to cite workplace discrimination than Chinese 23 per cent. There was a significant gender gap when respondents were asked if their ethnicity had ever excluded them from being considered a prospect for dating.

While 37 per cent of B.C.s Chinese men in the poll believed they had experienced dating discrimination, the proportion was much lower for Chinese women, at 19 per cent.

In addition, about 25 per cent of Chinese and South Asians in B.C. said they have been verbally harassed. But only 11 per cent reported being been physically harassed because of their ethnicity, and nine per cent said they had been denied goods or services.

“I’m not saying its a cause for alarm, but it could be a cause for concern,” Mossop said of the poll findings, adding that Insights West plans to do more surveys into how different ethnic groups in Canada feel about social issues ranging from teachers strikes to the proposed Enbridge pipeline through northern B.C. Mossop said that people of any ethnic group could be discriminated against in a workplace dominated by another ethic group.

[Farid Rohani, a board member of the Laurier Institution and former vice-president of the Asian Heritage Month Society] said people of Italian or Irish backgrounds may also at times feel discriminated against or stereotyped in Metro Vancouver, where 45 per cent of the population is non-white.

“I guarantee you, if you do the same polling on discrimination with people of non-Asian background, you’ll get similar numbers,” Rohani said. “It might be less or more, but it will still be there.”

For instance, Rohani said, if the Richmond residents of European and English-speaking backgrounds who are protesting the expansionof Chinese-only signs were asked if they felt discriminated against based on their ethnicity, Rohani said, they would cite “reverse racism.”

Noting that Canadians with Asian backgrounds come from countries where its common for parents to arrange marriages with people of the same cultural and religious group, Rohani also wasnt surprised some South Asians and Chinese feel excluded from dating people of certain ethnicities.

Most Chinese and South Asians in B.C. report discrimination.