Are we still that compassionate Canada? – Dueck

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Further to Erna Paris’ recent op-ed, Canadian mean-mindedness is back, Lorna Dueck picks up on the same theme from a faith perspective:

There are more than 40,000 places of worship in Canada, and care for our global neighbours matters to them. But now is when we will find out whether these communities can put action behind their beliefs. Mark Blumberg of Global Philanthropy reports that faith groups have increased overseas aid philanthropy 300 per cent since the boat people crisis, but my guess is we may be sorely out of touch with what it means to bring a refugee crisis into our suburban and rural homes today.

“It’s extremely provocative and it should act as a question to all of us as Canadians, as people of faith. The generous people who sponsored 70,000 refugees of the South Asian crisis still exist. That is still who we are, but the mean, nasty atmosphere that surrounds us now, that’s also true,” refugee advocate and author Mary Jo Leddy told us recently on Context TV.

“It has blinded us to the simple fact that these are our brothers and sisters,” she added. “… When you see them face to face and they look you in the eye [and they say] please help me, you at that moment are summoned, and it may well be one of the most important choices of your life.”

Are we still that compassionate Canada? – The Globe and Mail.

And more on the government’s inability to bring in Syrian refugees more quickly and the impact of cutbacks:

The Canadian government announced last year it would bring 1,300 Syrian refugees into Canada. The majority of refugees are sponsored by private groups, mostly churches, but to date only a couple hundred refugees have actually arrived.

In comparison, Sweden has taken in 30,000 Syrians with a population that is about one quarter of Canada’s.

The authors of the internal CIC report recommend the government hire more permanent staff, as well as hire some temporary workers to conduct a “blitz” to clear the backlog.

“Improvements to process accountability and processing efficiency cannot be realized without having a sufficient number of dedicated staff in place to handle core functions and to eliminate the backlog that has developed over time,” the report reads.

“It’s a damning report. It doesn’t beat around the bush,” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council of Refugees.

“There have been a lot of cuts in Citizenship and Immigration Canada, notably they’ve closed offices across Canada … It’s quite clear that things have not been going well.”

Departmental officials won’t say if more staff have been hired since the report was released late last year. But they said efforts are being made to speed up the process.

“Processing is done according to priority, with Syrian files currently identified as a priority,” according to a statement from a CIC spokesperson.

That concerns people like Showler, though, who wonder about other non-Syrian refugees currently in the cue.

“That means someone who was supposed to come from Thailand, Burma, Africa …that means they’re being delayed even further,” he said.

Showler said in the past, Canada has acted much faster to help refugees escape to safety.

“We did it for Yugoslavia. We brought in 5,000 and we did it within one year … we know how to do this. This is an issue of political will,” he added.

Syrian refugee backlog blamed on federal government cuts

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Citizenship Act Coming Into Force Provisions

2014/09/12 Leave a comment

From CIC’s newsletter, details of which provisions have come into force:

Provisions from Bill C-24 that came into force immediately upon Royal Assent included:

  • fast-tracking citizenship applications for members of the Canadian Armed Forces;
  • improving clarity on the first generation limit on citizenship for those born abroad;
  • enabling children born abroad to serving Crown servants to pass citizenship on to their children born or adopted abroad;
  • and streamlined decision-making for issuing discretionary grants  under section 54.

Provisions in the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act that came into force on August 1, 2014, included:

  • the new decision-making model for citizenship applications;
  • various measures to improve efficiency of the application process;
  • and a new judicial review and appeals process.

Other provisions will come into force on a date to be determined by the Governor in Council

E-newsletter.

Filed under C-24, Citizenship, Citizenship Act Tagged with ,

Suzanne Legault warns of growing federal government secrecy

2014/06/07 Leave a comment

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault confirming what we all know: that ATIP is broken and many departments are not in compliance with the principles and requirements of ATIP.

Not surprised to see CIC on the list of one of the worst departments in this regard as my experience indicates (still have an outstanding request for over a year for information that should have been released a long-time ago).

But Legault omits to mention the Government’s complicity for a culture of secrecy and lack of openness, and how this affects the public service role:

Legault blamed a lack of leadership toward transparency at the political level and within the senior ranks of some departments and agencies for creating an environment where the tendency is to try to keep information under lock and key.

“The main reason why the system is fragile and volatile is because for some reason, leadership in the institutions varies,” she said.

“When there is not very strong leadership at all levels of an institution in favour of timely transparency, we see institutions falter on releasing information. When we have strong leadership within the institutions, usually institutions perform well.”

Among the worst performers last year were Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the RCMP, Transport Canada and the Department of National Defence.

The federal Access to Information Act was introduced in 1985 and has remained largely unchanged since then despite frequent criticisms that the system is broken.

Legault writes in her report that real improvement to the access system will only come by modernizing the law, which she described as “a long-overdue step that is crucial to advancing the cause of transparency and accountability in Canada.

”In the House of Commons, Treasury Board President Tony Clement defended the government’s record on access to information Thursday, saying it had responded to more requests than previous governments combined.

“The total number of access to information requests that have been replied to since 1983, 50 per cent of them have been replied to by this government. We have replied to more access to information requests than the Trudeau, Mulroney, Turner, Campbell, Chrétien and Martin governments combined. That is our record on access to information and we are darn proud of it.”

Suzanne Legault warns of growing federal government secrecy | Ottawa Citizen.

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Audit slams feds’ ‘Open Data’ performance

2014/06/06 Leave a comment

Unfortunate, as paper (and pdfs) make an unnecessary complication to analyze data.

CIC publishes many operational stats in electronic format, making it easy to analyse. More formal ATIP requests are either paper or pdfs, inserting a tedious step of conversion.

Have a few new ATIP requests with the provinces (for data) and will see what comes back (have requested electronic format):

Newspapers Canada directly tested federal, provincial and municipal transparency laws with almost 400 formal requests for information last October and November, the 10th annual audit carried out by the organization.

This years version added 172 requests for electronic data sets, requiring the information to be provided in a format that can be digested and manipulated by computer.

Most government bodies fell short, many insisting on providing the data requested on paper, or providing it in the electronic equivalent of a photo — impossible to process in a spreadsheet or database program.

Among the worst performers were some departments of the federal government, which has been promoting its Open Data agenda as evidence of transparency, including the proactive posting of some 200,000 data sets online.

The audit found that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s own department, the Privy Council Office, refused to release any information in electronic format, insisting on paper printouts.

Audit slams feds’ ‘Open Data’ performance | National Newswatch.

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Library cuts trigger fears of knowledge drain

2014/01/28 Leave a comment

More on government reductions and cuts in government libraries. While pruning and digitizing collections is good practice, some press accounts suggest a less thorough process (e.g., Fisheries and Oceans libraries), with resulting loss of accumulated knowledge. Cutbacks to Library and Archives Canada a number of years back also undermine the Government’s record on knowledge and history.

I was amused, however, by this comment on access to material stored offsite:

Citizenship and Immigration spokesperson Remi Lariviere confirmed that the department’s library materials “are housed off-site with a private sector provider” in Laval, Que. He said the closure of the department library saves taxpayers about $200,000 a year and rejected suggestions that they are inaccessible to researchers.

Lariviere said there are “clear service standards for retrieval” and that most Citizenship and Immigration employees the predominant users of the department’s materials access documents online.

Given my experience with ATIP (where CIC fails to meet statutory requirements), or the lack of service standards for most citizenship and immigration dealings with the public, I must say I am somewhat sceptical. And the money saved for most departments is small change.

Library cuts trigger fears of knowledge drain.

Filed under Citizenship, Government, Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Book Launch Announcement in The Hill Times

2013/09/10 Leave a comment

Along with other ‘Heard on the Hill’ items, a good pre-article about my book Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias (half-way down the first page). The Hill Times main audience are political staffers, officials who need to follow the politics, and the journalists who cover the hill.

Should generate some interest. Full article below given pay wall:

Former top bureaucrat Griffith to release provocative new book, Policy Arrogance, on Sept. 23 at Three Brewers on Sparks Street

Six years ago, Andrew Griffith, a director general at the Canadian Heritage department, received a call from then-secretary of state for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney asking him why he had not approved language that was to be sent out in a press release. He replied, “But minister, it doesn’t sound ministerial.”

It was a late afternoon on a Friday and his first day on the job. He says in his new book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, he spent the weekend wondering if he was still employed.

“I survived, and went on to work with him and his staff for close to four years, first at Canadian Heritage and then at Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), following the transfer of the multicultural program to CIC in October 2008 after Kenney’s appointment as Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism,” he wrote in the preface to Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias. “During this period, citizenship (added to my responsibilities at CIC) and multiculturalism policies and programs were fundamentally reset, in line with the government’s emphasis on more meaningful citizenship and more integrative multiculturalism.”

Mr. Griffith, who is launching his book on Sept. 23 in Ottawa, said that Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias is a small case study about how the public service had to readjust to policy-making following the federal Conservatives’ rise to power. He said public servants had to “become more modest about the degree of expertise and knowledge” it provided to their political masters, “forced by the radically different perspective that the Harper government and Minister Kenney brought to these inherently complex social policy issues.”

In addition, Mr. Griffith wrote, “It is also the story of how officials balanced the public service challenge function role of ‘fearless advice’ with the need to serve the government of the day through ‘loyal implementation.’ Given the sharp nature of the policy reset, and the entrenched views of many public servants, this book aims to provide a small case study of how public servants adjusted to the new reality—one in which their expertise was fundamentally challenged, discounted, and at times ignored.”

The changes to policy making were so fundamental, Mr. Griffith said, that “In many cases, officials had to work through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief and loss—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—in dealing with the traumatic challenge to their role, as well as to the long-standing consensus between previous Liberal and Conservative parties on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.”

He called this period “an intense and interesting time of policy change and political-bureaucratic interface challenges.”

The book launch takes place on Sept. 23 at The Three Brewers, 240 Sparks St., from 5 to 7 p.m.

Fight Club, anyone? Hill Times, Embassy, and GCTC start Friday Night Fights | hilltimes.com.

Filed under Citizenship, Government, Multiculturalism, Public Policy Tagged with , , , , ,

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