Anita Anand first aimed to transform Canada’s military culture. The public service is next

2024/04/30 Leave a comment

A bit of a puff piece. And equating the military with the public service is misleading, as the public service is miles ahead of the military in improving representation at all levels for all groups.

Corporate boardrooms. Military barracks. Federal government offices.

They’re not locales with a reputation for fostering diversity.

Anita Anand has been trying to change that.

Ensuring people of all backgrounds feel accepted and heard no matter the venue is a mission that has followed her at every stage in her life and career, she said in a recent interview.

“This is a very personal issue for me,” said Anand, who is the first person of colour to hold the federal government’s purse strings as Treasury Board president.

“I still walk into rooms and look at tables that are not diverse.”

Case in point: in February, Anand walked into a briefing regarding mental-health counselling for Black public-service workers.

There were no Black employees in the room, she said.

“I said to the individuals briefing me: ’Why aren’t there any Black individuals facing me?’ This is not acceptable.”

Part of her mandate is to dismantle systemic barriers in the federal public service that allow workplace harassment, bullying, racism and other forms of discrimination and violence to fester.

It needs to happen at all levels, she said.

“We actually want to ensure we see diversity in briefing rooms for the minister, at the deputy minister level, at the assistant deputy minister level.”

Anand is no stranger to what racial discrimination can feel like.

Before she became the member of Parliament for Oakville, Ont., in 2019, she worked as a lawyer and law professor.

At one workplace, she said, people would often ask if she was in the accounting department.

“That struck me because there were more South Asians in the accounting department than there were in the school of lawyers,” she said.

“Often I would get confused with other Indian women that were working in the same work environment that I was.”

Rather than focusing on such events, she said she has put far more energy toward understanding how to improve the situation.

That included working at the United Nations, writing a thesis on racial discrimination in Canada, and researching the number of racialized individuals on boards of directors when she was a professor.

“At every stage of my life, I have tried to incorporate my views about diversity and inclusivity in everything I am doing,” Anand said.

“It’s not that I have to try to do it. It is a natural part of the way I think.”

Anand said it’s difficult to pick out a point in time when she became aware of her own racial identity.

“I’ll just say that was very stark for me growing up.”

Her Indian parents met in Ireland in the 1950s as physicians, got married in England, then lived in India and Nigeria before immigrating to Canada.

“They raised their three daughters in a predominantly white province with very few South Asians when they moved,” she said.

“We had a wonderful upbringing in Kentville, Nova Scotia, but the fact that I was racialized never left my consciousness. There weren’t very many people who looked like me and my sisters at my school.”

Part of her goal now is to make sure racialized children can see themselves in all manner of jobs, including in high-ranking government and military roles.

As defence minister, Anand said she told her team that cultural change was a file that “should not leave the centre of my desk.”

In the months before she took the file in fall 2021, a string of senior military leaders were accused of sexual misconduct.

And just over half a year into her tenure, Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour released the results of an external review, saying the culture within the Canadian Armed Forces was “deeply deficient.”

Anand accepted Arbour’s recommendations for change, admitting in a statement upon its anniversary in May 2023 that “change does not happen overnight, and it will not continue without effort.”

She was assigned to oversee the public service last July.

About 80,000 people are in the Canadian Forces, Anand said, but the number is closer to 275,000 for the entire public service.

The problems of that larger group seem to have flown under the radar, Anand said.

“Maybe it’s the (sexual misconduct) cases, maybe that it’s more stark because of the hierarchy that is so evident in uniforms and badges in the Canadian Armed Forces, compared to the public service, where we’re not wearing uniforms,” she said.

“But the issues are palpable.”

A panel of experts the Treasury Board tapped to help with workplace culture has recommended major changes, including instituting mandatory racism, discrimination and harassment training.

The panel also said employees must have mental-health counselling supports, and managers need to be trained in trauma-informed leadership.

As she reviews the recommendations, Anand said she will develop a path forward, with an action plan ready to go before the summer.

It won’t leave the centre of her desk, she said.

“This is not something that I have to worry about whether I will remember,” Anand said.

“It is as a function of who I am.”

Source: Anita Anand first aimed to transform Canada’s military culture. The public service is next

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Dave Snow: The federal government is spending millions on equity, diversity, and inclusion research

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

Informative data-based analysis of SSHRC funding for its Race, Diversity and Gender Initiative, revealing an overtly ideological and activist social justice and equity agenda:

…A year before, SSHRC awarded $19.2 million in funding for 46 grants of up to $450,000 for its Race, Diversity, and Gender Initiative to create partnerships to study disadvantaged groups. The program description encouraged projects that seek to “achieve greater justice and equity,” and its list of “possible research topics” included questions such as “How can cisgender and straight masculinity be reinvented for a gender-equitable world?” and “Which mechanisms perpetuate White privilege and how can such privilege best be challenged?” The language used in these new grants denotes the clearest shift yet towards more activist priorities in federal research grant funding.

SSHRC data on EDI

To determine whether the “hard” EDI of social justice activism has had a real effect on the types of projects that received funding for SSHRC grants, I conducted a content analysis of the titles of 680 grants awarded under four programs between 2022-23, the latter two of which are explicitly EDI-focused: 

  1. Insight Grants announced in 2023, which “support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities,” valued between $7,000 and $400,000 over five years. (504 total)
  2. Partnership Engage Grants announced in 2023, which provide short-term support for a partnership with a “single partner organization from the public, private or not-for-profit sector,” valued between $7,000 and $25,000 for one year. (100 total)
  3. Knowledge Synthesis Grants to study “Shifting Dynamics of Privilege and Marginalization” announced in 2023, valued at $30,000 for one year. (30 total)
  4. Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative grants announced in 2022, which support partnerships “on issues relating to systemic racism and discrimination of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups,” valued at “up to $450,000” over three years. (46 total)

First, I categorized each grant recipient according to whether their project title was clearly adopting a critical activist perspective (if there was any uncertainty, it was categorized as “no”). 

I then categorized each grant according to which EDI identity markers the projects covered—Indigenous Peoples, women/gender, LGBTQ+, race, and disability (including mental health). 

As Table 1 shows, the contrast between the two “traditional” grants and the two new EDI-focused grants was striking. Fully one-third of grants in the Race, Gender, and Diversity initiative focused on Indigenous Peoples, and 30 percent mentioned race or racism (compared with 3 percent and 1 percent of the Insight Grants). 

The disparity is especially pronounced when you compare the Race, Gender, and Diversity grants to the Insight Grants, where there was an 11-1 ratio in the proportion of grants awarded on the topic of Indigenous peoples (33 percent versus 3 percent). There was also a 30-1 ratio in the proportion of grants awarded on the topic of race (30 percent versus 1 percent).

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson

It might seem obvious that the two EDI-focused grants produced so many recipients with explicitly activist titles (63 percent compared with 9 percent of traditional grants). Yet it didn’t need to be this way. Examples of non-activist titles of Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative recipients included “Understanding Race and Racism in Immigration Detention” and “Open-Access Education Resources in Deaf Education Electronic Books as Pedagogy and Curriculum.” One can study marginalized communities without engaging in social justice activism. 

However, most of the EDI-focused grants awarded left no doubt as to the type of research that would be undertaken. Choice titles included:

  • “‘So what do we do now?’: Moving intersectionality from academic theory to recreation-based praxis” ($450,000 grant awarded)
  • “Queering Leadership, Indigenizing Governance: Building Intersectional Pathways for Two Spirit, Trans, and Queer Communities to Lead Social and Institutional Change” ($446,000 grant awarded)
  • “Carceral Intersections of Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation and Trans Experience in Confronting Anti-Black Racism and Structural Violence in the Prisoner Reentry Industrial Complex” ($400,075 grant awarded)

In addition to grant titles, I also examined SSHRC’s diversity data on grant recipients from “underrepresented groups” for all major grants in SSHRC’s own EDI dashboard. This included Insight Grants, Insight Development Grants, Partnership Grants, and Connection Grants contained in SSHRCs (diversity data for the two new EDI-focused grants described above were not available). 

Table 2 provides these numbers alongside SSHRC’s equity targets for 2024/2025 and the groups’ proportion of Canadian university faculty as of 2019. Numbers in red show “under-performance” in the applicant-recipient ratio and SSHRC’s own targets.

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson

Four things are notable. First, only one of SSHRC’s four target groups (visible minority applicants) has been underrepresented in terms of the applicant-recipient ratio. Second, while women are the only group who have exceeded SSHRC’s equity target, the percentage of recipients has been growing rapidly for visible minority applicants and persons with a disability. Third, no target group is underrepresented relative to its proportion of university faculty members, with women (56 percent of recipients) especially outperforming their faculty proportion (49 percent). Finally, Indigenous grant recipients (2 percent) are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the overall population (5 percent), but not relative to their proportion of university faculty members.

Damaging the pursuit of truth

The above analysis leads me to three broad conclusions. First, while the language of EDI has permeated SSHRC, the federal agency oscillates between the “soft” EDI of affirmative action and the “hard” EDI of critical social justice activism. Most of the time, SSHRC focuses on achieving “equity targets” and frames EDI as complementary to research excellence. However, SSHRC’s new EDI-themed grants explicitly adopt activist language, and it is little wonder that those awards have been dominated by activist projects.  

Second, when it comes to the “soft” EDI of affirmative action, SSHRC’s policies are clearly having their intended effect for all groups except Indigenous Peoples. The number of grants awarded to women, visible minority applicants, and persons with a disability is rising. Grants are being awarded to members of these three groups at a proportion equal to or greater than their share of university faculty, and in the case of women, well above their share of the overall population. At this rate, it will soon be inaccurate for SSHRC to refer to “underrepresented groups” when it comes to prestigious national grants.

Finally, the “hard” EDI of critical social justice activism poses the biggest threat to SSHRC’s commitment to research excellence. While there are important critiques of the effects of “soft” EDI of affirmative action, it does not necessarily pose the same existential threat to research excellence. But the “hard” EDI of critical social justice activism is utterly incompatible with the objective pursuit of truth. One need only skim the titles of grants awarded under SSHRC’s two new EDI-focused initiatives to see how far they have strayed from the objective, empirical knowledge creation that we expect our national granting agencies to fund. Ironically, the more an award is pitched in terms of “diversity,” the less intellectually diverse the recipients seem to be. Thankfully, such activist research remains primarily confined to the new (and for now temporary) EDI-focused grants. 

If the federal government wants universities to keep the public’s trust, it should avoid any future activist-themed grants and ensure that granting agencies eschew social justice priorities. Federal granting agencies using taxpayer dollars should be explicit that their primary commitment is to promote excellence via the creation and dissemination of objective, falsifiable research knowledge. The university is supposed to function as a system of knowledge production. Policies that openly tie research to activist political ends threaten to undermine that very system.

Source: Dave Snow: The federal government is spending millions on equity, diversity, and inclusion research

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Ethnic diversity is still a serious issue at the top level in accounting firms

2024/03/25 Leave a comment

Of note. In general, when I looked at this some years ago, accounting firms have had a stronger diversity record than other regulated professions. Methodology of Canadian situation only focuses on recruitment photos not hard numbers so hard to assess (hopefully, Singer will add this to his research agenda):

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the lack of diversity in workplaces, particularly in terms of ethnic and gender diversity. To address this, many companies have taken action by adjusting their recruiting policies and setting targets for achieving minimum diversity levels.

The accounting profession has suffered from the under-representation of women and marginalized people for many years. It has long been considered a white, male-dominant profession.

Accounting firms, especially the Big Four — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler — have taken various measures to improve the diversity of their workforce by recruiting and retaining employees of various backgrounds. 

Each of the Big Four audit firms, for example, have created the equivalent position of chief diversity officer — a position that develops and implements diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the organization.

Despite these efforts, diversity at more senior ranks in accounting firms is still very much lagging, especially with regard to ethnic representation. 

Under-representation in accounting

A 2019 survey from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants found that only nine per cent of accounting firm partners identify as non-white.

Another study from the Association of Accountants and Financial Professionals in Business found that only 8.9 per cent of accountants and auditors identified as Hispanic or Latino, 8.5 per cent identified as Black or African American and 12 per cent identified as Asian. In total, these group represent almost 30 per cent of The professional accountants, but their proportion in partner levels are much lower than that.

A similar report from the United Kingdom found only 11 out of almost 3,000 (or 0.4 per cent) of equity partners in the Big Four firms in the U.K. are Black, compared with their population representation of 3.3 per cent.

Although we still don’t have robust enough data about accounting firms in Canada yet, there is research that suggests women and minorities are under-represented at senior positionsin Canadian firms as well.

Recognizing the under-representation of ethnic minority accountants at the partner level, my colleagues and I aimed to gain insights into the work environment of ethnic minority accountants who made it to the top of the ladder in U.S. firms. 

New insights from research

My co-researchers and I used the term ethnic minority in our study to refer to those who are Asian, Black non-Latino, Hispanic Latino and white non-Latino as per the U.S. Census’ taxonomy. We collected data on audit partners in the U.S. from 2016 to 2020 and conducted a comprehensive analysis of various aspects of their work. 

We found that ethnic minority auditors were less likely to become partners at accounting firms. The ones that did were more likely to become partners at less notable accounting offices. They were more likely to become partners in firms other than the Big Four firms, in offices that did not have prestigious clients, in smaller offices and in offices that earned less fees.

This is despite the fact that, as our research found, they performed better than non-ethnic minority partners. Using various performance measures common in accounting research, we found ethnic minority partners performed better than their white counterparts. It is, therefore, unlikely that the under-representation of ethnic minorities at the partner level is due to their inability to perform well.

Our study also found that ethnic minority partners were more likely to be in charge of audit engagements if a client’s senior leadership also included ethnic minorities. 

It also showed that, once an error occurred, white audit partners were more likely to be absolved of audit failures than ethnic minority audit partners. The likelihood of an audit partner being replaced after a material error was discovered in a financial statement was higher for ethnic minority partners (39 per cent) versus white partners (24 per cent). 

Improving ethnic representation

One of the consequences of ineffective diversity, equity and inclusion practices in the accounting profession is talent drain. Up to 55 per cent of accountants from under-represented groups leave their employers, and up to 18 per cent leave the profession altogether. This raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of the profession’s talent pipeline. 

Our study points to some major gaps in terms of promotion and treatment of ethnic audit partners in the accounting profession. Diversity at higher levels in the corporate hierarchy appears to be lacking. 

Our study also suggests two major benefits of closing these gaps. First, because ethnic audit partners appear to outperform their white counterparts, more ethnic representation at senior positions will translate to higher-quality audits. Second, improving the ethnic diversity in senior accounting positions will help combat talent drainage.

There must be greater efforts to recruit, nurture and promote talented accountants from under-represented backgrounds, including fast-tracking promising audit managers to partnership. Individuals from under-represented groups should receive opportunities equal to those of their white peers when it comes to career advancement and the choice of work environment.

We believe more ethnically diverse accounting leadership will strengthen the profession by attracting and retaining talented ethnic accounting professionals and will position it to deal better with the challenges of the future.

Source: Ethnic diversity is still a serious issue at the top level in accounting firms

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Report: Audiences demand diversity in films, Hollywood can do more

2024/03/09 Leave a comment

The regular annual report, just ahead of the Oscars:

Ahead of Hollywood’s biggest night, UCLA published a new study Thursday looking at diversity within the film industry.

It found people of color making gains in the major categories in 2023 — film leads, total actors, directors and writers. However, women suffered losses in the acting and writing categories. Both groups remain underrepresented in all major employment categories, according to the study.

Hollywood was in a tough spot in 2023, still recovering from the pandemic and undergoing strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. But movies such as Barbie and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes helped bolster box offices, according to the study, which examined global and domestic earnings of theatrically released movies.

The study found that in 2023, films with casts that were 31 to 40 percent people of color earned the highest median global box office receipts, while films with casts that were 11 percent people of color were the poorest performers. The study also found that female moviegoers bought the majority of opening weekend domestic tickets for three of the top 10 movies in 2023.

The study noted that franchise films posted the highest earnings of their film series when they embraced more diversity. The examples included movies such as Creed 3, Scream 6, and John Wick: Chapter 4, which featured lead actors of color and casts with 50 percent or more actors of color.

“Films that embrace diversity are more likely to resonate with audiences, leading to box-office success and ultimately long-term sustainability for the industry,” wrote Darnell Hunt in a statement. Hunt is the UCLA executive vice chancellor and provost, and co-founder of the report.

Behind the scenes, representation for lead actors, total actors, directors, and writers of color hit 11-year highs. Also, top films featuring more than 50 percent cast diversity outnumbered less diverse films. But the study cautions that these numbers are likely a reflection of decisions made in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd. “The question is if this upward trend of diversity will continue,” Hunt wrote.

Women did not make any gains in the top Hollywood jobs in 2023, according to the study. The only category where they remained stagnant was in directing, where 1.5 out of 10 theatrical film directors were women. Films directed by white women were found most likely to have the smallest budgets, despite the huge success of Barbie, which made over $1.4 billion globally.

While this study only examined theatrical releases, a separate study looking at the streaming industry is set to come out later this year.

Source: Report: Audiences demand diversity in films, Hollywood can do more

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ICYMI: A Major Hollywood Diversity Report Shows Little Change—Except for One Promising Stat

2023/08/22 Leave a comment

Of note:

Over the last 16 years, Hollywood has certainly discussed the need for better representation in onscreen. Movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo dominated red-carpet conversation and social media. And there has been some change: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences grew and diversified its voting body in hopes of nominating a wider array of movies and performances—and the nominees and winners have in fact been more diverse in recent years. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But a new study from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative suggests that, despite the talk of progress, not much has actually changed onscreen. Stacy L. Smith, a professor of communications and head of the initiative, led a review of 1,600 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2022. The largest study of its kind, it examines a whopping 69,858 speaking roles across those movies to see whether Hollywood has generated a significant shift in representation in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQ+ identity, or disabilities. 

“It’s all talk and little action,” says Smith. “Many of these numbers did not move or went backwards. That shows us that the industry does not know how to change without the intervention of experts to work with them to change the systemic processes that lead to inequality and discrimination.”

But the study did identify one major exception: In the last 16 years, the percentage of Asian characters with speaking roles onscreen skyrocketed from 3.4% to 15.9%. In that same time period, Black characters saw little change, from 13.0% to 13.4%, and the proportion of Latino characters grew from just 3.3% to just 5.2%. “My initial reaction is I’m very happy but very guilty,” says Bing Chen, the CEO and Co-Founder of Gold House, an organization that champions and invests in Asian Pacific creators and companies. “We need to support all multicultural communities.” But he finds the data encouraging: change is achievable across demographics.

Chen identifies three major milestones for Asian characters onscreen in the last several years. In 2018, Crazy Rich Asians, the first film by a major Hollywood studio to feature a majority Asian cast in 25 years since The Joy Luck Club premiered in 1993, became a genuine blockbuster. The next year, The Farewell and Parasite—movies partially or completely featuring non-English dialogue—performed well at the box office against their budgets and won awards. Parasite won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. “The year former President Trump was spitting all sorts of really anti-Asian xenophobic commentary, talking about ‘kung flu’ and all that nonsense,” says Chen. “So when Parasitewon, that was a really big affirming moment of, we’re actually creatively excellent, even if we don’t speak your language.” 

And last year, Everything Everywhere All at Once became a surprise box office smash and the most-awarded film of all time.

And that’s just in film. On TV, shows like Fresh Off the Boat, Squid Game, and Kim’s Convenience have had a major cultural impact. And cultural exports from Asian countries have gone mainstream in the U.S. “There’s no question that the rise of K-Pop as a institution has directly and indirectly contributed to the acculturation of the masses to K-content, writ-large,” says Chen. Smith agrees that while the U.S. dominated the global pop culture space for decades, much of that power has shifted to Asian countries that are exporting music, television, film, and even social media content to the U.S. at high rates, and K-Pop paved the way for mass cultural events like the Korean show Squid Game.

Here’s why experts think we’ve seen a shift onscreen—and why there’s still work to do.

Most underrepresented groups have seen little progress

Movies remain very white, very straight, very cis, and very male. 

The few highlights in the data come with major caveats. As Barbie‘s massive box office numbers demonstrate, female-led pictures can succeed when studios actually make them. Executives are finally starting to learn that lesson: 44% of leading or co-leading roles went to women and girls in 2022, a 16-year-peak and more than double the number in 2007. But, on the whole, casts are still dominated by men. The percentage of female characters with speaking roles ticked up just 4.7 percentage points from 29.9% in 2007 to 34.6% last year. 

And while women of color made major strides in representation onscreen—19% of movies in 2022 featured a woman of color in a leading role, up from an abysmal 1% in 2007—there has been little progress throughout the late 2010s and 2020s. The percentage of women of color in leading roles has remained flat for years. And 70 of the top 100 films of 2022 featured no women of color in any role. 

“We now have 16 years of evidence that shows that activism failed particularly with girls and women since it’s almost a flatline from 2007 to 2022,” says Smith. The advocacy arm of Time’s Up, the celebrity-filled organization that sprung up in the wake of #MeToo and promised to fight for gender equity in film, imploded last year. Whispers that after all the talk of change in 2017 the pendulum is swinging back to a more regressive approach to business have spread through Hollywood.

Other data points proved even more bleak. Only 2.1% of speaking characters in the top films of 2022 identified as LGBTQ+, a percentage which has not changed meaningfully since 2014 when the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative began measuring. There were 5 transgender characters in the top 100 films of 2022, a 9-year high point, but 4 of these 5 characters appeared in a single film: Bros.

And the number of speaking characters with a disability in a major film was just 1.9% in 2022, a drop from 2.4% in 2015 when Annenberg started recording stats.

In light of these data, the success of Asian characters onscreen stands out even more. Chen argues that those successes have come only after years of advocacy.

There’s been a renaissance of Asian stories onscreen

Chen attributes the rise of Asian representation in film to several factors. One is simply the proliferation of content largely thanks to streamers’ constant quest for new programming to court more subscribers: More storytelling has translated to more diverse storytelling. The rallying cry around #StopAsianHate tied to acts of violence against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic helped motivate activists to push for greater representation of Asian stories onscreen in hopes that movies could evoke empathy and relatability. But Chen says the efforts to tell Asian stories stretch beyond that one movement. “I would say within the community, the way we think about it is of course we still care about #StopAsianHate and ensuring that the safety and belonging of our community, but our community cares even more about creative excellence, as opposed to just sort of representation.”

And then there’s the surge in adaptations of bestselling books written by Asian authors, like Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series, and the forthcoming Interior Chinatown show, based on the book by Charles Yu. “You see a rise in both the number of Asian authors writing books and making the bestseller list but also, equally important, the quick adaptation of those works by Asian producers,” Chen says. “This has been a very concentrated effort in the community over the last three to four years.” 

In terms of original content, Chen points to writer-directors with newfound creative control over their projects. Beef’s Lee Sung Jin, Turning Red’s Domee Shi, Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung, Joy Ride’s Adele Lim, Never Have I Ever’s Mindy Kaling have gotten to tell stories “that reflect their real lived experience,” he says. There have, of course, long been Asian creators in Hollywood, but finally these particular movies and shows in all their specificity and detail have been greenlit. In a previous op-ed for TIME, Chen and his co-founder Jeremy Tran argued that diversity in studio leadership can trickle down to the content itself, pointing to the power of studio big wigs like Bela Bajaria and Marian Lee Dicus at Netflix, Albert Cheng at Amazon Prime Video, and Asad Ayaz and Nancy Lee at Disney.

Smith casts some skepticism on the notion that Hollywood has altered what stories it brings to the big screen—even in the face of massive box office takes. Yes, the ticket sales for Crazy Rich Asians afforded director Jon M. Chu the opportunity to direct other films with notably diverse casts, like In the Heights and the forthcoming Wicked adaptation. And the success of that same film boosted the career of Michelle Yeoh, who went on to win an Oscar for another film with a predominantly Asian cast, Everything Everywhere All at Once. But to Smith, those exceptions can obfuscate the work that still needs to be done.

“If you can think of a few instances, what that does is cause you to overestimate a particular event,” she says. “So if you call up someone like Jon Chu or the Daniels [directors of Everything Everywhere All At Once], you’re going to think, ‘Oh things are actually getting better.’ I would challenge the studios to look at the data.” The data, she says, suggests that shifts in Asian representation in film can largely be attributed to increased audience appetite for foreign films, not efforts by American studios to diversity Hollywood. “It’s a function of the box office changing,” she argues, “not the decisions of legacy studios.”

An influx of international content

What we watch has fundamentally shifted in the last few years. Back in 2020, when he won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film for Parasite, Korean director Bong Joon Ho said in his acceptance speech, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” He could not have known then how quickly Americans would heed his advice. Parasite went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars and proved to be a box office phenomenon in the U.S.

Around the time of Parasite’s history-making Oscars win, streaming services, particularly Netflix, were taking a more international approach to producing and acquiring content. Audiences seemed decreasingly deterred by those pesky subtitles. Crossover hits like the Korean show Squid Game and the Indian film RRR have become some of the streamer’s biggest hits. (Squid Game set a record for the most watched show on Netflix ever and ranked No. 1 in more than 90 countries across the world.

“Netflix is spending literally billions of dollars in K-content and Indian content,” says Chen. “Korea and India, in particular, are becoming the dominant successful exporters of pop content.” The studio has invested in massive production infrastructure in Korea and is increasingly focused on doing the same thing in India in addition to acquiring original content in those countries.

Netflix is certainly the most globally minded of the American studios. “Bela Bajaria is way out in front as the Chief Content Officer at Netflix,” says Smith. “As a woman who comes from an underrepresented background, she’s hitting it out of the park in terms of curating global talent. The entire industry is following her league.” The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has previously found that Netflix performs better than traditional Hollywood studios on representation metrics, both in the U.S. and globally.

Beyond streaming, content from Asian countries has become increasingly dominant on TikTok and YouTube, platforms where Gen Z especially consumes most of its content. Younger viewers who hail from multicultural homes and are increasingly connected to people across the globe through social media don’t have the same bias toward a single language that past generations do.

In film, Katherine Pieper, program director at the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, says the pandemic helped accelerate the shift toward international content as viewers sought out new content while stuck on our couches at home rather than relying on whatever Hollywood was putting in movie theaters for entertainment. “With the change in the box office from 2020 to 2022, we saw a couple of types of broad categories of films in the top 100 that had been relatively minimal in previous years,” she says, “namely anime films, Bollywood films, and international films set primarily in South Asia or in Japan with primarily Asian characters.”

Pieper and Smith attribute the influx in Asian representation largely to those foreign films suddenly overtaking their American counterparts at the domestic box office rather than any major change in how the traditional studios make decisions. “Each year there’s between five and eight films that meet those descriptions that we hadn’t seen before 2021, in addition to a couple of films from the U.S. that might have played the role, like Raya and the Last Dragon, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and The Eternals.” 

But of course, those few North American releases can have an impact as well. The Canadian show Kim’s Convenience found a significant American audience on Netflix and launched the career of Simu Liu, who became the first Asian man to lead a major American superhero film in Marvel’s Shang-Chi. That movie, in turn, afforded him opportunities in other mainstream movies, like Barbie. The impetus shouldn’t be only on creators of color to write for and cast non-white actors. 

“If an Asian writer-producer is producing a piece, there are probably going to be some Asian characters. But if a non-Asian one is, what is their propensity to write an Asian character and why?” asks Chen. “My best inference is that writers’ rooms have become more diverse in general—though there’s still a long way to go obviously.” 

That progress, of course, ties directly to issues being raised by the actors and writers on strike in Hollywood. The WGA has revealed that while the proportion of underrepresented writers has grown in the last several years, they largely occupy lower-level positions and are the first to be put in financial straits when studios decide to forgo writers’ rooms or make major cuts. “Creators of color are the first people to be penalized in these strikes for all sorts of systemic reasons,” says Chen. Both Smith and Chen are eagerly watching the strikes to see how changes to writers’ rooms might impact long-term trends. The ultimate goal, they say, is to empower writers and actors of color to continue to tell their own stories—and pressure studios to back their visions.

Source: A Major Hollywood Diversity Report Shows Little Change—Except for One Promising Stat

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Castel: La dimension géopolitique du cabinet Trudeau

2023/08/09 Leave a comment

Reasonable analysis:

Les observateurs s’entendent pour dire que le remaniement du Conseil des ministres fédéral par Justin Trudeau a occasionné un bouleversement majeur, l’ensemble de l’opération devant lancer un message économique. Or le plus extraordinaire, c’est de constater que le découpage de la représentativité sociale et géographique des nominations est resté quasi identique.

Nonobstant l’importance des portefeuilles, la question de la parité femmes/hommes ne se pose plus depuis 2015. Avec le remaniement de janvier 2021, on compte désormais cinq femmes parmi les dix ministres au sommet de l’ordre de préséance.

Ledit découpage fait aussi référence à la préoccupation qu’il y a, autant du côté du premier ministre que du côté des premiers intéressés, à ce que les régions se sentent adéquatement représentées. Certains choix comportent une forme de remerciement régional en même temps que des arrière-pensées électorales.

Le nombre de ministres par province est resté inchangé : l’Ontario en a 16 (41 %) ; le Québec, 11 (28 %), les provinces de l’Atlantique, 6 (15 %), la Colombie-Britannique, 4 (10 %) et les provinces des Prairies, 2 (5 %). Ces proportions, les mêmes que celles ayant suivi les élections de 2021, sont d’abord le reflet du poids démographique des provinces, mais elles sont aussi motivées par la préoccupation de solidifier les bases libérales locales dans des régions fragilisées depuis 2019 (Atlantique, Québec rural) tout en envoyant un message attractif aux régions historiquement rébarbatives, comme les Prairies ou le sud de l’Ontario rural.

La force du Parti libéral du Canada (PLC) réside dans les régions urbaines. C’est aussi sa faiblesse, puisque l’accès au gouvernement se gagne moins avec des votes qu’avec des sièges. Treize ministres proviennent de la grande région de Toronto, six de la région de Montréal et quatre de la région de Vancouver. Hormis un ministère torontois supplémentaire, le premier ministre garde le même nombre de ministres urbains, avec trois nominations pouvant être motivées par un souci de solidifier un siège menacé : Arif Virani à Toronto, Soraya Martinez Ferrada à Montréal et Jenna Sudds à Ottawa.

Suivant les élections de 2019, le PLC s’appuie sur une chaîne de quelques petits blocs ruraux et une série de zones urbaines isolées. Plusieurs ministres (Patty Hajdu, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Pascale St-Onge, François-Philippe Champagne) viennent de ces espaces stratégiques.

Depuis lors, une douzaine de francophones font partie du Conseil des ministres. Au Québec, la progression du Bloc québécois renforce l’importance de chaque poste ministériel en dehors de Montréal. Hors Québec, le jeu de chaise musicale est délicat, car chaque perte est souvent mal ressentie. C’était le cas pour Ginette Petitpas Taylor en novembre 2019 et c’est maintenant le cas pour Mona Fortier à Ottawa.

Cela dit, certains coups comptent double, car l’Ouest est représenté, depuis 2021, par Randy Boissonnault, un francophone militant d’Edmonton, et Dan Vandal, un Métis de Winnipeg, appelé au cabinet en 2019.

Sous les gouvernements Trudeau, trois Autochtones ont fait partie du Conseil des ministres. Si 10 des 18 députés autochtones ont été élus sous la bannière libérale, les élections de 2019 on fait du Nouveau Parti démocratique la force montante dans les régions boréales et nordiques ainsi que dans les régions de Winnipeg, d’Edmonton et de Vancouver, où des candidats autochtones se présentent.

La question de la diversité ethnique et religieuse est devenue incontournable, notamment à Toronto. À commencer par la vice-première ministre, on peut avancer qu’une quinzaine de ministres ont une origine ethnique autre que britannique ou française. Onze ministres (28 %) correspondent à l’un des groupes que Statistique Canada associe aux minorités visibles.

L’entrée ou la sortie de chaque personne au cabinet affecte l’ensemble d’un édifice déjà compliqué. Le premier ministre s’est sans doute rendu compte que, vu le nombre de paramètres à considérer, la seule façon de sortir de la quadrature du cercle passait par une augmentation du nombre de ministres. Ainsi les cabinets sont-ils passés de 31 à 37, puis à 39 membres, à chaque lendemain d’élections (2015, 2019, 2021). C’est le remaniement de juillet 2018 qui inaugure cette tendance, avec 35 membres.

De plus, à la fin du premier mandat de Justin Trudeau, le Québec et surtout l’Ontario ont gagné en influence, alors que les Prairies ont perdu des plumes, ce qui ne fut pas favorable aux élections de 2019. En n’allant pas chercher de ministre supplémentaire dans l’Ouest pour plutôt ajouter un ministre de Toronto, tout en faisant des changements stratégiques à Montréal et à Ottawa, le chef du Parti libéral du Canada donne l’impression qu’il pense aux prochaines élections, où il jouera défensif, pour recourir au langage sportif.

Source: La dimension géopolitique du cabinet Trudeau

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With End of Affirmative Action, a Push for a New Tool: Adversity Scores

2023/07/04 Leave a comment

Of interest. Another example of using class-type criteria:

For the head of admissions at a medical school, Dr. Mark Henderson is pretty blunt when sizing up the profession.

“Mostly rich kids get to go to medical school,” he said.

In his role at the medical school at the University of California, Davis, Dr. Henderson has tried to change that, developing an unorthodox tool to evaluate applicants: the socioeconomic disadvantage scale, or S.E.D.

The scale rates every applicant from zero to 99, taking into account their life circumstances, such as family income and parental education. Admissions decisions are based on that score, combined with the usual portfolio of grades, test scores, recommendations, essays and interviews.

The disadvantage scale has helped turn U.C. Davis into one of the most diverse medical schools in the country — notable in a state that voted in 1996 to ban affirmative action.

With the Supreme Court’s ruling last week against race-conscious admissions, the medical school offers a glimpse of how selective schools across the country might overhaul their admissions policies, as they look for alternative ways to achieve diversity without running afoul of the new law.

Last week, President Biden called adversity scores a “new standard” for achieving diversity.

Word has gotten out about the U.C. Davis scale. Dr. Henderson said that about 20 schools had recently requested more information. And there are other socioeconomic measurements, including Landscape, released in 2019 from the College Board, the nonprofit that administers the SATs. That tool allows undergraduate admissions offices to assess the socioeconomic backgrounds of individual students.

But skeptics question whether such rankings — or any kind of socioeconomic affirmative action — will be enough to replace race-conscious affirmative action. And schools that use adversity scales may also find themselves wandering into legal quagmires, with conservative groups promising to fight programs that are simply stand-ins for race.

Over the years, medical schools have made some progress in diversifying their student bodies, with numbers ticking up. But just like undergraduate admissions, wealth and connections continue to play a determining role in who is accepted. More than half of medical students come from families in the top 20 percent of income, while only 4 percent come from those in the bottom 20 percent, according to data from the American Association of Medical Colleges.

There is also a family dynamic. Children of doctors are 24 timesmore likely to become doctors than their peers, according to the American Medical Association. It’s hard to know why the profession passes down from generation to generation, but the statistic drove the association to adopt a policy opposing legacy preferences in admissions.

“That’s a staggering economic gap between medical students and the general public,” said Dr. Henderson, who comes from a working-class upbringing and now serves as associate dean of admissions.

As a consequence, the number of Black doctors remains stubbornly low: About 6 percent of practicing doctors in the United States are Black, compared with 13.6 percent of the American population who identify as Black.

With the Supreme Court decision, “that number is likely to go down,” said Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, the president of Meharry Medical College, formed in 1876 in Nashville to train Black health care providers.

Leaders in medicine say training more Black and Hispanic doctors could help bridge the vast divides in American health care. Research shows that doctors from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups are more likely to work in primary care or in locales where doctors are scarce.

And patients have better outcomes when treated by doctors from similar backgrounds, said Dr. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, president of the American Medical Association.

The U.C. Davis scale has drawn attention because of its ability to bring in diverse students using what the schools says are “race-neutral” socioeconomic models.

In its most recent entering class of 133 students, 14 percent were Black and 30 percent were Hispanic. Nationally, 10 percent of medical school students were Black and 12 percent were Hispanic. A vast majority of the U.C. Davis class — 84 percent — comes from disadvantaged backgrounds, and 42 percent are the first in their family to go to college.

The overall acceptance rate has been less than 2 percent.

In the Davis scale, first used in 2012, eight categories establish an adversity score for each candidate. Factors include family income, whether applicants come from an underserved area, whether they help support their nuclear families and whether their parents went to college.

The higher an applicant rates on the disadvantage scale, the bigger the boost.

There is no set formula on how to balance the scale with the academic record, Dr. Henderson said, but a simulation of the system revealed that students from underrepresented groups grew to 15.3 percent from 10.7 percent. And the share of economically disadvantaged students tripled, to 14.5 percent of the class from 4.6 percent.

At the same time, scores from the MCAT, the standardized test for medical school applications, dropped only marginally.

Still, it’s not easy to persuade medical schools to upend admissions standards, particularly anything that undermines the value of test scores and grades. Dr. Henderson said he had received pushback from his own colleagues.

“Doctors say their kids got into medical school elsewhere, and they didn’t get in here,” he said.

As the children of doctors, he said, those applicants earned an S.E.D. score of zero.

A number of scholars, including Richard D. Kahlenberg, have promoted using class-conscious preferences, which they say could address racial inequities in education without fostering the resentment often prompted by racially based diversity plans.

And President Biden said on Thursday that his administration would develop a “new standard for colleges taking into account the adversity a student has overcome.”

“The kid who faced tougher challenges has demonstrated more grit, more determination,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House, “and that should be a factor that colleges should take into account in admissions.”

He might be talking about someone like Eleanor Adams, a member of the Choctaw Nation, who said that she did not think medical school was an option for her.

“I didn’t grow up with a lot of money,” she said.

But she found mentors who encouraged her, and today she is in her third year of medical school at U.C. Davis, which is in Sacramento. She plans to become an Indian Health Service doctor in Oklahoma — fulfilling one of the school’s goals, Dr. Henderson said, which is to train doctors who will return to their communities.

At schools in other states without affirmative action, such as the University of Michigan, admissions officials have complained that enrolling more socioeconomically disadvantaged students has not significantly increased the share of Black, Hispanic and Native American students.

“Those tools certainly have utility, but they fall short of accomplishing what a race-conscious admission practice does,” said Dr. Ehrenfeld of the American Medical Association.

The socioeconomic rankings could also be legally challenged. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in his majority opinion on affirmative action, wrote that colleges could consider how race had affected an applicant’s life. But he also warned against using proxies for race.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian activist group, has already sued a selective school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., for using economic factors as stand-ins for race in admissions.

Joshua P. Thompson, a lawyer for the foundation, said the legal questions surrounding these disadvantage indexes were complex.

“I think the devil is going to be in the details,” Mr. Thompson said. “The Supreme Court was pretty clear that what can’t be done directly can’t be done indirectly.”

Should it come to that, Dr. Henderson said that his school’s disadvantage scale would be defensible in court.

“Am I worried about it? Yes,” Dr. Henderson said of a lawsuit. “Is it going to stop me? No.”

Source: With End of Affirmative Action, a Push for a New Tool: Adversity Scores

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Cinq ans après «SLĀV», les minorités visibles se taillent une place 

2023/06/27 Leave a comment

Of interest, increased diversity in Quebec cultural sector:

Depuis la controverse entourant la création des spectacles SLĀV et Kanata, il y a cinq ans, les artistes issus de minorités visibles foulent plus que jamais les planches des théâtres québécois. Au cinéma toutefois, leur présence évolue en dent de scie, montrent des données inédites compilées par Le Devoir.

« On sent que les théâtres se sont emparés de cet enjeu plus radicalement. Malheureusement, ça bouge moins vite au cinéma, où seuls quelques projets tirent la moyenne vers le haut », constate la présidente de l’Union des artistes, Tania Kontoyanni, à la vue de nos chiffres. Selon elle, on peut tout de même parler « d’un avant et d’un après » SLĀV et Kanata dans le milieu culturel.

Il y a cinq ans, ces deux pièces du metteur en scène Robert Lepage ont engendré un débat enflammé sur l’appropriation culturelle et la place des minorités visibles dans les productions culturelles d’ici. La première, SLĀV, s’inspirait de chants d’esclaves afro-américains, mais ne comptait que deux comédiennes noires sur six. La seconde, Kanata, se voulait une relecture de « l’histoire du Canada à travers le prisme des rapports entre Blancs et Autochtones », mais ne comptait pas un seul comédien autochtone.

En 2020, Le Devoir avait mesuré l’impact de la polémique et constaté que la proportion d’acteurs, de réalisateurs, de metteurs en scène et d’auteurs de minorités visibles au cinéma et au théâtre avait quasi doublé entre 2017 et 2019. Mais qu’en est-il aujourd’hui ? Est-ce que les efforts dans ces milieux se poursuivent ?

Notre équipe a répété l’exercice pour l’année 2022, en utilisant la même méthodologie, soit d’éplucher la programmation de sept théâtres et les génériques des 10 films les plus populaires en salle durant l’année. Malgré les limites de ce genre d’exercice, les chiffres compilés sont tout de même révélateurs.

En théâtre, 21 % des metteurs en scène, auteurs et interprètes des compagnies recensées étaient issus de minorités visibles pour la saison 2022-2023. Cette proportion était de 14 % en 2018-2019 et de 9 % en 2017-2018.

En cinéma, selon l’analyse des 10 films les plus vus en 2022, 11,5 % des scénaristes, réalisateurs et acteurs étaient issus de minorités visibles. Une proportion qui a plus que doublé en comparaison avec la période avant SLĀV et Kanata, où l’on ne comptait que 4 % d’artistes de minorités visibles. Mais c’est bien moins que 2019, où l’on se retrouvait avec une proportion de 18,7 %.

Fait à noter : le gouvernement canadien définit comme « minorité visible » toutes « personnes, autres que les Autochtones, qui ne sont pas de race blanche ou qui n’ont pas la peau blanche ». Pour notre exercice, nous avons inclus les Autochtones dans cette définition.

Selon le recensement de 2021 de Statistique Canada, 16,1 % de la population du Québec s’identifie à une des minorités visibles, et il y a 2,5 % d’Autochtones dans la province.

On sent que les théâtres se sont emparés de cet enjeu plus radicalement. Malheureusement, ça bouge moins vite au cinéma.

— Tania Kontoyanni

Le théâtre dans la bonne voie

« On est vraiment rendus ailleurs, je trouve ça très encourageant », commente Charles Bender, comédien d’origine autochtone.

Selon lui, depuis le congrès du Conseil québécois du théâtre (CQT) en 2015, il existait déjà un mouvement pour plus de diversité au théâtre. L’affaire SLĀV et Kanata a permis de faire connaître ces enjeux à l’ensemble de la population et d’accélérer le changement.

« Les membres de la communauté sont plus sensibles aux réalités de tout le monde, on se pose des questions à chaque étape de création sur nos façons de faire. On va dans la bonne direction », renchérit la coprésidente du CQT, Rachel Morse. Mais beaucoup reste à faire, selon elle, pour rendre le milieu encore plus inclusif.

Elle pointe du doigt le déséquilibre d’une institution théâtrale à l’autre. « Certains ont besoin de temps. On a lancé une trousse d’outils sur l’appropriation culturelle [la semaine dernière], c’est quelque chose qui pourra les aider à mettre en marche ce changement », espère-t-elle.

Si la proportion de minorités visibles parmi les auteurs ou les metteurs en scène aug, ente sans cesse depuis 2017 en théâtre, cela va bien plus lentement que du côté des interprètes. Or, de l’avis de Charles Bender, il faut néanmoins continuer de porter le regard au-delà de la distribution sur scène. « Il reste encore beaucoup de travail pour faire davantage de place aux créations des minorités visibles », plaide-t-il.

« Les espaces pour les accueillir existent, les diffuseurs sont au rendez-vous, les spectateurs aussi. Maintenant, il faut leur donner le temps et les moyens de créer. Il faut encourager la relève et grossir le bassin de créateurs autochtones ou issus de la diversité », insiste-t-il, rappelant que la pandémie en a découragé plus d’un à continuer dans ce domaine.

Le cinéma à la traîne

Du côté du cinéma, le portrait est un peu moins reluisant, considérant la baisse enregistrée en 2022 du pourcentage de minorités visibles à l’écran selon notre exercice. « Ça montre que ça dépend vraiment des projets et que cette volonté de faire de la place à la diversité n’a rien de généralisé », commente Tania Kontoyanni. Parmi les films analysés, Chien blanc et 23 décembre tirent en effet la moyenne vers le haut.

La présidente de l’UDA retient tout de même une amélioration depuis l’affaire SLĀV et Kanata. « Il y a aujourd’hui une plus grande préoccupation pour cet enjeu. On le voit pour les rôles, et il faudrait maintenant le percevoir aussi du côté de l’écriture et de la réalisation », ajoute-t-elle, réagissant à nos chiffres qui montrent qu’en 2022 — dans le palmarès de films analysé — aucune production ne comptait un scénariste ou un réalisateur issu de minorités visibles.

Proportion d’interprètes issus de minorités visibles parmi les dix films les plus vus au Québec

L’auteur-compositeur-interprète Ricardo Lamour invite quant à lui à regarder plus loin que les chiffres : « Oui il y a plus grande représentation [des minorités] sur scène et à l’écran, mais quelle est la qualité de leur expérience ? » Les personnes noires — et ça vaut aussi pour les autres minorités visibles — décrochent rarement des premiers rôles, constate-t-il. Elles se retrouvent encore beaucoup dans des rôles stéréotypés ou se font offrir de petits rôles dans l’unique but de montrer qu’une production est inclusive, selon lui.

« La place des personnes noires dans l’industrie culturelle reste très fragile. […] Même lorsqu’elles ont trouvé une place, beaucoup marchent sur la pointe des pieds dans ce qu’elles peuvent vraiment dire au sujet d’une production. […] Je m’attends à plus de notre milieu, on peut vraiment faire mieux. »

Avec Sandrine Vieira, Alex Fontaine, Janie Dussault et Charles-Olivier L’Homme

Source: Cinq ans après «SLĀV», les minorités visibles se taillent une place

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IYMI: La diversité mise au ban de la magistrature québécoise 

2023/05/30 Leave a comment

Contrast between federal and provincial appointments of note:

Depuis l’arrivée de la Coalition avenir Québec au pouvoir en 2018, trois juges issus de « communautés culturelles » ont été nommés à la Cour du Québec sur un total de 63 nominations, révèle une compilation du Devoir. Même si ces données montrent une tendance légèrement à la baisse, le cabinet du ministre de la Justice se dit « très sensible à cette préoccupation ».

Quatre membres des communautés culturelles ont accédé à la fonction de juge en 2016-2017, la première année pour laquelle des données étaient disponibles. Mais depuis, leur nombre a chuté : il a atteint, au maximum, le chiffre de deux en 2020-2021. En 2019-2020 et 2021-2022, aucun juge issu de la diversité ne figurait parmi les 23 nominations à la Cour du Québec.

Au total, depuis l’élection du gouvernement Legault en octobre 2018, moins de 5 % des nominations du ministre de la Justice ont permis à des membres des communautés culturelles d’accéder aux plus hautes fonctions de la Cour du Québec.

Il est difficile, cependant, « d’établir avec certitude le nombre de juges ou candidats issus de la diversité », souligne le cabinet du ministre de la Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette. Comme le relève également Martine L. Tremblay, juge en chef adjointe de la Cour du Québec (chambre civile), l’appartenance à ces communautés fait l’objet d’autodéclaration. « Par conséquent, ces données ne peuvent être considérées comme entièrement fiables », fait valoir le cabinet.

La juge Tremblay se questionne aussi sur la notion de communauté culturelle, soit l’attribut de la case à sélectionner lors des candidatures. « Est-ce que ce sont les immigrants de première génération, est-ce que ce sont les Juifs, est-ce que ce sont les anglophones ? La juge Peggy Corbel Warolin, en Abitibi, est très fière de dire qu’elle est Belge et la juge Hermina Popescu, dans l’Est-du-Québec, est très fière de dire qu’elle est d’origine roumaine. Et quand vous parlez à la juge Popescu, l’accent est notoire », explique la magistrate lors d’un entretien téléphonique avec Le Devoir.

Cette définition fait aussi débat au sein même des comités de sélection. « J’ai eu une situation où la personne était une immigrante caucasienne et réclamait le statut de communauté culturelle », relate-t-elle. « La personne du comité de sélection, elle-même issue d’une communauté culturelle, disait : “Voyons donc ! Elle ne peut pas être victime de discrimination” ».

Selon le décompte de la juge Tremblay, 33 des 289 juges en poste à la Cour du Québec représentent la « diversité culturelle ». Cette diversité « n’est peut-être pas noire, n’est peut-être pas racialisée, mais 33 juges sur 289, ce n’est quand même pas rien », souligne-t-elle. Selon elle, la magistrature doit refléter la société. « Mais quand on est juge, on doit être impartial et neutre. »

Un « déficit »

Les candidats à la fonction de juge à la Cour du Québec sont d’abord identifiés par un comité de sélection, qui fournit ensuite trois noms au ministre de la Justice afin que celui-ci recommande un candidat au conseil des ministres.

Cette procédure est inscrite dans le règlement sur la sélection des candidats au poste de juge, en révision à Québec. Celui-ci prévoit que les membres des comités de sélection reçoivent des formations pour être « sensibilisés à l’objectif de favoriser la parité […] ainsi que la représentation des communautés culturelles au sein de la magistrature ».

« [Mais] on est d’accord là, ce n’est pas d’un Noir dont vous avez besoin, c’est d’un juge, soutient la juge Tremblay. Par contre, à qualité égale, on doit être sensible à la nécessité d’avoir des avocats noirs, innus ou asiatiques » parmi les juges sélectionnés.

De l’avis du juge suppléant Daniel Dortélus, le règlement ne prévoit tout de même pas de « disposition concrète pour faire une place à la diversité » chez les juges.

En mars 2022, le magistrat — qui est Noir — avait transmis une lettre au ministre de la Justice afin qu’il comble le « déficit » en matière de diversité à la magistrature. Il y déplorait qu’après des décennies de représentations, l’enjeu « demeure toujours d’actualité en 2022 ».

En 2020, par exemple, il écrivait aux juges en chef de la Cour du Québec souhaiter que « le vent d’ouverture » dont témoignait la nomination de huit femmes par Ottawa à la magistrature de l’Ontario, dont plusieurs minorités visibles, « atteigne le Québec ».

Selon les données compilées par Le Devoir, les nominations de personnes issues des communautés culturelles sont généralement plus nombreuses au fédéral. Par exemple, l’an dernier, plus du cinquième des juges nommés aux cours supérieures (13 des 58 nominations) s’auto-identifiaient comme « minorités visibles ».

Le gouvernement de Justin Trudeau a par ailleurs nommé deux juges issus de la diversité à la Cour suprême, soit le premier juge non blanc, Mahmud Jamal, en 2021 et la première juge autochtone, Michelle O’Bonsawin, l’été dernier.

Dans un échange de courriels avec Le Devoir, le juge Dortélus propose que le règlement sur la sélection des candidats au poste de juge à la Cour du Québec soit modifié pour « qu’un ou les deux membres représentant le public [dans le comité de sélection] soient issus des groupes minoritaires et racisés, qui demeurent sous-représentés à la limite de l’exclusion en 2023 ».

Il ajoute que sans la diversification des comités, « le cercle vicieux d’exclusion des avocates et avocats issus des groupes minoritaires va continuer, en dépit des principes du droit à l’égalité ».

Un problème partagé

Selon la juge Tremblay, le manque de diversité au sein de la magistrature est le reflet de celui des universités et du Barreau. « Il faudrait d’abord qu’ils fassent des études de droit, c’est là qu’est le nerf de la guerre. Après, il faudrait qu’ils restent au sein de la profession pendant au moins dix ans », dit-elle.

Dix pour cent des membres du Barreau du Québec étaient Autochtones ou identifiés à un « groupe ethnoculturel » en 2020-2021. Le Barreau-mètre 2022, qui dresse le portrait de la profession en statistiques, souligne que la proportion d’avocats qui s’auto-identifient à un groupe minoritaire (y compris les minorités sexuelles et en situation de handicap) est passée de 8 % en 2014-2015 à 13 % en 2020-2021.

Or l’attachée de presse du ministre Jolin-Barrette, Élisabeth Gosselin, souligne que « peu d’avocats issus de la diversité soumettent leur candidature à la magistrature ». Le Barreau de Montréal a d’ailleurs mis sur pied un comité pour se pencher sur les questions de manque de diversité. « Nous suivons ces travaux de près », assure Mme Gosselin.

Source: La diversité mise au ban de la magistrature québécoise

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Douglas Todd: Canadian Indigenous spirituality anything but monolithic 

2023/04/22 Leave a comment

Another good reminder:

“All First Nations believed their values and traditions were gifts from the Creator. One of the most important and common teachings was that people should live in harmony with the natural world and all it contained.”

That’s what the Canadian government’s educational resource for young people says every Indigenous person believed before settlers arrived. And today many continue to believe there is uniformity in contemporary Indigenous spiritual practice.

But the recent Canadian census reveals that Canada’s 1.8 million Indigenous people are anything but monolithic in regard to religion and spiritual practice. The range is extraordinary.

To begin with, the census, which every decade asks about religion, found a fast-rising number of Indigenous people, about 47 per cent, are checking off the box: “No religion, and secular perspectives.” That compares to only 20 per cent in 2011.

At the other end of the spectrum, a declining number of Indigenous people, also about 47 per cent, says they’re Christians.

And only four per cent of Canadian Indigenous people put themselves in the category of “traditional (North American Indigenous) spirituality.” This small group would be closest to the historic form of spirituality described in Ottawa’s educational resource for young people.

Indigenous religious diversity stretches surprisingly wide in 2023, flowing into unfamiliar streams.

The census, for instance, found 1,840 Indigenous Canadians who say they’re Muslim, while another 1,615 Canadians are Jewish.

I reached out to some Indigenous, Muslim and Jewish organizations to interview a First Nations, Inuit or Metis who is Jewish or Muslim, whereupon the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs introduced me to Cheyenne Neszo.

A status member of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation based in and around Prince George, Neszo is deep into the process of converting to Judaism, the proud religion of her fiancé, Zach Berinstein.

Neszo, a 32-year-old lawyer, grew up in North Delta, where her extended family occasionally attended church and had in many ways lost touch with their Indigenous roots. That changed in recent years, as Neszo, her mother and grandmother applied for First Nations status and reconnected to those cultural origins.

Now, Neszo is three years into studying Judaism with Rabbi Dan Moscovitz at Vancouver’s Temple Sholom, where she and Berinstein will be married in September. “It’s just one of the most welcoming places I’ve come across,” said Neszo, who specializes in Indigenous law. Their wedding will be Jewish, with Lheidli T’enneh elements.

To understand the evolution in Indigenous religiosity over the years, I have frequently interviewed First Nations, Metis and Inuit elders and others who are Christians, who belong to one of the three denominations that ran Canada’s defunct federally funded residential schools.

Although the proportion of Indigenous people who belong to those denominations is declining, it remains that 485,000 Indigenous people today (27 per cent) still say they’re Catholic, 110,000 affiliate with the Anglicans and 42,000 are United Church members.

In addition, 28,000 Indigenous people belong to the Pentecostal Church, which did not operate a residential school. And what of the 6,515 who are Jehovah’s Witnesses and 5,035 who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)?

Although he was not available for an interview, John Borrows, who is of Anishinaabe heritage and a committed Latter-day Saint, was recently profiled by Cardus, a Canadian think tank. Borrows is a professor specializing in Indigenous law, as well as head of the Victoria Multifaith Society.

Like other Anishinaabe people, Borrows went on a Vision Quest as a young man, fasting and being alone in the forest. Although he joined the Latter Day Saints when he was 19, he believes those experiences of encountering God’s presence in nature still inform his faith.

Ray Aldred, a member of the Cree Nation who directs the Indigenous studies program at Vancouver School of Theology, is not surprised more Canadian First Nations are classifying themselves under “no religion, and secular perspectives.”

They are essentially saying, Alder believes, that they don’t want to be associated with “one of those,” by which he means the Christians who are increasingly being condemned for their role in operating about 125 residential schools, which were almost all closed by the 1970s.

There was “no such thing as secular” in traditional Indigenous culture, said Aldred. “The category didn’t exist in the Indigenous mindset.”

He said Indigenous people are picking up the concept from attending college and university, where faculty tend to vilify Christianity and academic papers about the faith seem to only get published if the author can show they hate the religion.

“All that has an impact.”

At the same time, Aldred said many Indigenous people don’t see a contradiction between Christianity and their peoples’ ancient spiritual ways. “Their families have been part of the church for a couple of hundred years.”

For his part, Aldred, who is an Anglican priest, said he believes settler culture and religion has brought both positives and negatives.

Rather than Indigenous people zeroing in on their specific religious or non-religious identities, Aldred suggests they “try to focus on a communal identity,” which connects them to the land and to each other.

He talked about how Metis people, as well as the Nisga’a of northern B.C., follow many different denominations and religious traditions without fighting about it. He admires the Nisga’a creed: “One nation, one heart.”

And in an era when social media incites groups to feel contempt for the other, Aldred rightly encourages people of different faiths and no faith to engage in authentic dialogue.

“The important thing is people learn to speak heart to heart, so we hear one another.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Canadian Indigenous spirituality anything but monolithic 

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