Douglas Todd: Canada’s public guardians have failed Vancouver [investor immigration and housing]

2016/11/14 Leave a comment

Good long read by Todd on some of the major policy and operational failures that have contributed to housing prices in Vancouver:

The main dereliction of duty by Immigration Canada has been its refusal, until it was too late, to properly assess the Business Immigrant Program (BIP).

Started in the mid-1980s, the BIP has arguably been the most crucial factor driving up Metro housing prices. UBC geographer David Ley estimates it has brought more than 400,000 well-off immigrants to Metro.

The first problem with the BIP, say Ley and others, is that it had extremely low standards.

It began by requiring an immigrant entrepreneur to invest only $150,000 in a business and hire one Canadian. The U.S., at the same time, was demanding business immigrants invest at least four times more money and hire at least 10 Americans.

One of the few high-level government officials to sound a warning about BIP applicants, whose first choice is to pour money into “safe” real estate, was David Mulroney, Canada’s former ambassador to China.

Asia-Pacific-trade boosters like Yuen Pau Woo, recently named a senator, have long said Canada should do everything it can to attract rich immigrants, calling them “the best and brightest.”

But Mulroney counters that liberally handing out passports “devalues the importance of Canadian citizenship.” And Justin Fung, with HALT (Housing Action for Local Taxpayers), concurs: “We’re practically giving away passports for free, and little benefit.”

In the meantime, Immigration Canada officials have not properly monitored the BIP. Their lax approach went on for decades as wealthy trans-nationals avoided being tested for compliance with even the BIP’s low standards.

A forensic auditor for the World Bank ended up called Canada’s BIP “a massive sham.”

The Conservatives finally killed it in 2014, which Fung called “years too late.”

Fung also worries a form of the BIP lives on in Quebec’s stand-alone immigrant-investor plan, which each year brings thousands more moneyed arrivals to Vancouver.

In addition, the federal Liberals are considering reviving a pilot program similar to the BIP.

Canada Revenue Agency

It gets worse.

While Canadian passports were being sold at bargain-basement prices, the Canada Revenue Agency has been ignoring another red flag — that many BIP newcomers and other owners of Metro mansions have been reporting strangely low incomes.

Even though the tax department had been warned, the politicians responsible did not want to face the reality that thousands of BIP investors and others were hiding most of their assets, which should have been taxed.

Officials have not wanted to admit to the widespread phenomenon of “astronaut” fathers who leave wives and student children in expensive homes in Metro to return to their homelands to do business — without declaring their offshore assets to Canadian tax officials.

An early attempt to bring in a national law requiring residents of Canada to disclose their foreign assets was opposed and not only by centre-right politicians, says Ley. B.C.’s centre-left NDP government of the 1990s also expressed concern such a law would be “culturally insensitive” and decrease B.C.’s attractiveness as a place for migrants to invest.

And even when a national foreign-assets disclosure tax law was finally brought into effect, it has often gone unenforced.

In the midst of Vancouver’s escalating housing crisis, in 2014, former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper chopped 262 experienced tax auditors.

One of the first people to publicly expose ongoing tax avoidance by the trans-national elite was former Richmond Mayor Greg Halsey-Brandt.

In 2015 Halsey-Brandt directed Postmedia to data showing residents of one of Richmond’s most expensive neighbourhoods, where most of the population is foreign-born, were reporting poverty-level incomes — and thus putting themselves in position to pay virtually no taxes.

Another revelation came in the fall of 2015 when statistician Jens von Bergmann and UBC geographer Dan Hiebert independently unveiled census statistics showing high portions of mansion owners in ritzy Vancouver neighbourhoods were declaring almost no income.

The figures from von Bergmann and Hiebert showed several neighbourhoods, in which houses were selling in the $5-million to $7-million range, that were generally populated by immigrants, particularly ethnic Chinese.

In 2016, South China Morning Post journalist Ian Young broke open the tax department’s failures. The Hong-Kong-based newspaper revealed Canada Revenue Agency officials had been aware for decades of such tax-avoidance schemes.

CRA officials had admitted, in internal documents, they were not willing to devote auditors to catching these “highly sophisticated” tax-avoiding schemes by Metro Vancouver mansion owners and others.

‘They were scared,” the source said, “of being labelled racist.’”

In addition, a common real-estate scam has gone largely undetected as a direct result of the failure of Canada’s tax and immigration departments to share their information.

Because of the absence of cooperation, many Metro house owners have been avoiding paying capital gains taxes. They have been falsely claiming they are residents of Canada for tax and immigration purposes when they are actually mostly living outside the country and not disclosing their foreign income.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Canada’s immigration and tax departments have not been the only ones turning a blind eye to such unfairness and cheating in Vancouver’s exploding housing market.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada’s public guardians have failed Vancouver | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Joy Kogawa’s many shades of Japanese-Canadian shame

2016/10/22 Leave a comment

Interesting and disturbing:

Joy Kogawa has noticed reviewers of her new bookof memoirs have not touched arguably the most controversial section of her intimate exploration of betrayal and hope.

Reviewers have focused instead on the way the Vancouver-raised author of Obasan and The Rain Descends dealt with her Japanese-Canadian family being sent to an internment camp, the bombing of Nagasaki and how her father was a pedophile.

However, Kogawa, 81, has been publicly forthright for decades about those shame-filled realities.

The most cutting-edge section of her book, titled Gently to Nagasaki, digs into horrors most Canadians and ethnic Japanese want to deny — Japan’s war atrocities.

The peace activist’s memoirs describe her painful relatively recent discovery of the extent of the slaughters and mass rapes committed by the Imperial Japanese army.

It was while Japanese troops were killing millions of Asians and others that Canadian governments in 1942 sent many Japanese-Canadians, most of them from B.C., to internment camps.

Following her family’s ordeal in camps in the Kootenays and Alberta, Kogawa gained wide attention for helping lead the campaign that culminated in Ottawa’s 1988 apology and compensation to 20,000 Japanese-Canadians.

The many honours eventually bestowed upon Kogawa included the 2006 establishment of Vancouver’s Kogawa House, where the family had lived until 1942. It’s now a residence for writers.

But Kogawa has not allowed adoration to stop her pursuit of the authentic. Her mission seems to be to move beyond denial on all fronts: regarding internment camps, racism, global warming, her priest-father’s sexual crimes and her relatively recent discovery of Japanese war monstrosities.

“Love and truth are indivisible,” Kogawa says.

Her wise aphorism has had unpleasant consequences, though. Since most Canadians who don’t want to offend ignore Japan’s grisly war history, Kogawa acknowledged in an interview from her residence in Toronto that she’s had to “face the rage” of many.

“It’s cost me some really good friendships.”

Whether in Toronto, Vancouver or Japan, Kogawa said, many people, including ethnic Japanese, “just don’t believe” the atrocities occurred. They’d “rather die” than have the reality exposed.

“Or they feel I’m betraying them by talking about it. But it takes the truth to get to reconciliation.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Joy Kogawa’s many shades of Japanese-Canadian shame | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Canadians far from resolving not-so-minor niqab issue

2016/10/03 Leave a comment

More on the niqab in the aftermath of Douglas Todd’s interview with Zunera Ishaq, highlighting some of her apparent contradictions and inconsistencies.

One aspect missing from these discussions is a comparison with the traditionalists or the fundamentalists within other faiths, and how their values are or are not compatible with what we think are Canadian values:

SFU social policy specialist John Richards points out Ishaq’s hearing never got to the Charter of Rights arguments. It’s another indication the debate is not over.

The niqab raises the question Quebec’s noted Taylor-Bouchard commission attempted to answer on the limits of tolerance, which is: How far should Canadians go to “reasonably accommodate” certain cultural practices?

Appropriately, UBC political scientist emeritus Philip Resnick distinguishes Canada’s niqab debate from the August controversy over some French cities banning the full-body “burkini” from beaches.

“The burkini debate arose because emotions were very raw in the aftermath of the Muslim terrorist attack on Nice on Bastille Day. I think there is no more reason to deny women the right to wear a flowing garment when swimming than to deny them a bikini or string swimming suit.”

But Resnick urges Canadians to “avoid tut-tutting and moralizing” over Europeans’ generally more restrictive response to the niqab. “I wonder how quickly Canadian tolerance would be replaced by fear if we had to deal with an intransigent Islamist contingent in our midst?”

I originally intended to write just one column on the far-reaching niqab debate. But plans changed last week when Ishaq, after many earlier calls to her family’s Mississauga residence, picked up the phone and answered some fresh questions.

In addition to emphasizing her “choice” to cover her face, Ishaq said she believes in strict segregation of the sexes, opposes homosexuality and abortion, believes women are “unclean” during menstruation and is convinced Muslims must obey Islamic commands.

…Questions too ‘gentle’

Richards, who travels frequently to South Asia for research, appreciated my exploration into Ishaq’s paradoxical worldview, but also suggested I’d been “gentle.”

I could have asked Ishaq about “apostasy,” which refers to the rejection of a religion, said Richards.

A Pew Research poll found 75 per cent of Pakistanis believe a person should be executed for apostasy.

Many people in Pakistan, the fifth largest source of immigrants to Canada, also believe women must wear niqabs. And hundreds of Pakistani women are killed each year in “honour killings.”

Given the global geo-political issues, I could also have been more curious when Ishaq (who is now on a family trip in Pakistan) said “no comment” in regards to Saudi Arabia’s pressure on women to wear full-length burkas and niqabs.

Even though Ishaq says she is devoted to the supreme value of “choice,” it was unusual that she passed up the chance to criticize an Islamic government that removes women’s choice and requires them to dress a certain way.

Ishaq is affiliated with several politicized Muslim organizations, including the Hanafi school of thought, which believes apostasy is a sin punishable by death, according to the Federal Court and Richards.

Canadian Muslim writer Tarek Fetah has also shown Ishaq has connections with Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which are part of the ultraconservative Salafist movement.

Given Ishaq’s apparent contradictions, Toronto blogger Eiynah says “framing the niqab as some sort of feminist tool of bodily autonomy is the most ludicrous, topsy-turvy thing I’d ever heard of.”

Similarly, Resnick, who specializes in anglophone and francophone cultures, finds it “extraordinary” that many secular left-wing people defend the niqab.

“Ultimately, the issue goes back to the one the Bouchard-Taylor commission in Quebec sought to tackle — what constitutes reasonable accommodation?” Resnick says.

“The niqab offends Canadian sensibilities in a way that the head scarf does not. It reminds us there are countries where women cannot show their faces in public. It represents the most backward-looking and repressive feature of Salafist ideology.

“At the minimum I would agree with those who would bar the wearing of a niqab at any citizenship ceremony. Nor would I see it as acceptable garb for anyone working in the public sector and therefore having to serve a much more diverse Canadian public.”

Like Swedes, political scientists say, Canadians tend to believe in their exceptionalism.

“Many Canadians, in their refusal to take tougher positions on accommodation and integration of immigrants, like to think of themselves as exceptionally virtuous, unlike the wicked Americans or Europeans. But are we?” asks Resnick.

“Quebecois are franker in this regard than English Canadians, in regards to both language and the niqab, since their sense of cultural identity is more clearly on the line than our own.

“But I wonder how well Canadian smugness would survive a serious challenge to our core values, of the type that radical Islamism represents in Europe.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Canadians far from resolving not-so-minor niqab issue | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Does Sweden’s migration crisis contain lesson for Canada?

2016/09/12 Leave a comment

Douglas Todd correctly asks the question: Would Canada have the same opens to immigration if we were not protected from unmanaged immigration by our oceans and the US?

Highly unlikely:

Could Canada, which Swedes tend to admire because of our multicultural policy, survive what the Swedes are enduring?

With a population of almost 10 million, Sweden took in more refugees per capita since the beginning of 2015 than any country in the European Union, including Germany.

If Canada had accepted the same proportion of asylum seekers as Sweden, it would have added up to more than 570,000 people. That’s far from the 25,000 the federal Liberals approved.

The rest of the EU, other than Germany, has shown no interest in following open-hearted Sweden. Neither has the U.S., which has only accepted 6,000 Syrians.

Some called ‘naive’

“I’m horribly disappointed in the rest of the EU states,” said Anna Rehnvall, migration specialist for Fores think-tank, which represents Sweden’s Green and liberal parties.

anna-rehnvallRefusing asylum seekers is not an option for Rehnvall, who has worked on migration issues with the Conference Board of Canada.

“When asylum seekers show up on your border, you have to look them in the eye. In Sweden, it’s really hard to say no to someone who arrives on your doorstep.”

Given her attitude, Rehnvall admits she’s been called “naive.” But so have many Swedes.

Seventeen per cent of Sweden’s population is now foreign born, with most admitted as refugees or through family reunification.

In Canada, 21 per cent of the population is foreign born; the portion rising to more than 45 per cent in Metro Vancouver and Toronto.

Since Canada is protected by the U.S. border and three oceans, relatively few newcomers to Canada show up as asylum seekers. Most arrivals have been skilled, educated or wealthy.

Source: Douglas Todd: Does Sweden’s migration crisis contain lesson for Canada? | Vancouver Sun

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Young immigrants to Canada passionate about spirituality: Todd

2016/08/09 1 Comment

Will be interesting to track this religiosity over time and see which of the experts quoted proves to be more accurate in their predictions:

Between 2001 and 2011, about 39 per cent of the people who came to Canada arrived as Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists,” Bibby writes in the new book, Canada’s Catholics (Novalis), co-written with Angus Reid. “However, 44 per cent arrived as either Protestants (23 per cent) or Catholics (21 per cent). The remainder (17 per cent) had no religious affiliation.”With people outside the West becoming more religiously committed than ever, Bibby believes Canada’s unusually high immigration intake will prove a “windfall” for religion and some forms of Christianity, particularly Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism.

Father Rob Allore, priest at St. Mark’s Catholic parish at UBC, says the immigrants and foreign students who predominate at his church generally “stress the importance of community” more than Canadian-born British Columbians, who tend to be more individualistic.

Immigrants are also typically more socially conservative than Canadian-born people, particularly in regards to sex, marriage and relationships, said Allore, echoing research studies.

Farida Bano Ali, a prominent Vancouver Muslim, agrees that most immigrants are fairly religious in their early years in Canada.

“But once they become accustomed to freedom here, it’s a different story. Many drift away with their friends. And some are drawn to anti-social behaviour. Or just to making money.”

John Stackhouse, a Canadian professor specializing in Christianity and culture, believes many immigrants find practical value in joining a religious organization when they first arrive in Canada. It provides a sense of identity, plus job-market connections.

Unlike Bibby, Stackhouse questions whether most of the influx of immigrants — who account for 70 per cent of Canada’s population growth — will remain loyal to their faith groups long enough to have a lasting impact on religious attendance in Canada.

http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/young-immigrants-to-canada-passionate-about-religion 

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Vancouver’s housing debate not about race, it’s about public policy: Todd

2016/07/18 Leave a comment

Good long column by Todd:

I had coffee this week with three Canadian friends — one of us was born in Egypt, one in Hong Kong, one in Iran and one in Canada (me) — and the subject arose: Is there a relationship between Metro Vancouver’s out-of-control housing prices and racism?

We battered around a few arguments, including that the hundreds of thousands of transnational migrants and investors who have discovered Metro Vancouver in the past decade cannot be morally blamed, individually, for the city’s astronomical housing costs. That is, except for those involved in corruption or tax evasion.

In most cases, transnational migrants, many wealthy and with dual citizenship, are simply doing what anyone in their situation would do if they could afford it: Investing in Canadian real estate to create a safe economic landing for their families outside their often-troubled countries of origin.

While our coffee group recognized some people might scapegoat migrants from certain countries, especially Mainland China, we acknowledged the most crucial thing is to get up to speed on the multiple factors behind runaway housing prices — so we can encourage governments to finally do something to ease them.

Our discussion led me to conclude that the debate over housing affordability does not need to be dominated by race or ethnicity.

It needs to focus on public policy.

It should zero in on public policies that will help Metro Vancouver be a real community — a place not only of ethnic diversity, but of economic diversity, where power is mostly in the hands of the people and the gap between the poor, middle class and rich does not widen more than it has already.

That means discussing policy options, such as whether and how to impose a tax on foreign speculators, tax empty houses, stop international money laundering and tax avoidance, curtail Quebec’s immigrant-investor program, enforce rules in the real-estate industry, add social housing, increase zoning density, adjust immigration levels, shift interest rates and stop foreign donations to B.C. politicians.
But many Canadians don’t seem comfortable with such debates, unlike many in Europe and elsewhere, where it’s generally expected one will be up for a rousing dinner-table discussion about politics, money and power.

Rather than talking about overriding issues such as economic equality and justice, Canadians seem to find it easier, more socially acceptable, to talk about so-called identity politics; which emphasizes ethnicity, gender and individual freedoms.

As a result, in Canada, racial discrimination, or the possibility of it, is often the go-to topic. That’s so even while international agencies continue to rank Canada the most “tolerant” country in the world in regards to immigration. See the recent global surveys by Britain’s respected Legatum Institute and the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based non-profit.

When it comes to housing, why do a relative few British Columbian voices remain fixated on racial issues?

It’s easy to dismiss real estate industry lobbyists who accuse those worried about high housing prices as racist or xenophobic — since their vested interest for the past three decades has been to distract politicians from imposing policies that might cool the flow of foreign money into the market.

Some other Canadians concerned about racism don’t have such dubious motives, but I’m convinced much of their super-vigilance arises out of a misunderstanding of the definition of racism.

The Oxford Dictionary understanding of racism is quite specific. It’s not as sweeping as believed by some people, including the liberal arts academics who build their careers on alleging that “undertones” of racism exist where they may not.

The Oxford Dictionary defines racism as: “Prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.”

While the housing crisis may trigger some hard-core racists — people who actually do discriminate based on the belief their ethno-cultural group is superior — there is no evidence such behaviour is widespread in Canada or Metro Vancouver.

Residents of Metro would have a right to be morally concerned no matter where the billions of dollars flooding into the city’s housing market was coming from.

If, theoretically, it were pouring in from tens of thousands of Caucasians based in Kelowna, strong feelings, including resentment, and ethical concerns, including in regards to equality, would be justified.

A number of prominent Canadians who are committed to ethnic diversity and social justice tend to agree.

Vancouver’s housing debate “is not about racism. It’s about a difference in economic power,” said Clarence Cheng, former chief executive officer of B.C.’s SUCCESS Foundation, which supports program for immigrants. “It’s about the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.”

Albert Lo, head of the Canada Race Relations Foundation, says there’s nothing wrong with collecting information on the national origins of people buying and selling houses in Metro Vancouver, in part because it could combat tax evasion.

“In Canada, we are so used to the idea of tolerance that we sometimes find it odd to look at nationalities. That causes some people to jump up and start using the word ‘racism.’ I don’t think it’s helpful,” says Lo.

Ujjal Dosanjh, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, lambastes politicians and property developers who misuse the word “racist” to stifle debate over important issues. He says people have to acknowledge the great distance Canadians have come in overcoming bigotry of the early 20thcentury.

UBC planning professor emeritus Setty Pendakur, who has advised the Chinese government, says hyper-vigilant worries about inter-cultural tensions provide a convenient coverup for wealthy investors, whether Canadian-born or from abroad, who “park illegal money here or avoid Canadian taxes.”

Vancouver’s Justin Fung, a member of Housing Action for Local Taxpayers or HALT, says “cries of racism” sidetrack British Columbians from facing the hard policy decisions that will be necessary if we are to ever again link Metro Vancouver wages to housing costs.

So, if as a society we can manage to stay focused on the central issue, how do we institute policies that will help Metro Vancouver become a place where average families can afford to buy or rent decent housing?

Even though it’s ethically fine to collect data on the nationalities of buyers and sellers — and, more importantly, on the country in which they are “residents for tax purposes” — any policies to cool down the housing market must, of course, be universal.

We should expect colour-blindness in all policies designed to counter runaway housing prices — including those that deal with speculation, empty houses, international money laundering, real estate trickery, social housing, political party financing or immigration policy.

The problem is that some hyper-vigilant peoples’ understanding of racism is so sweeping that even after I wrote last week about how B.C. politicians should stop being among the few in the world to accept political donations from foreign companies — someone suggested such a ban may be “xenophobic.”

If that’s the case, virtually the entire world is xenophobic. That includes those who operate The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which covers 35 countries, including Canada.

The OECD, a defender of democracy and sovereignty, recently made it clear that citizens of a nation have a perfect right to protect themselves from transnational powers and money.

As a February OECD report plainly said: “Political parties need to be responsive to their constituents and not influenced by foreign interests.”

Source: Vancouver’s housing debate not about race, it’s about public policy | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Are Canadians prepared to pay for elderly immigrants? | Vancouver Sun

2016/07/04 Leave a comment

Todd covers some of the issues involved in his follow-up piece to his earlier more descriptive Douglas Todd: Push on for ‘culturally appropriate’ seniors homes.

But he overly emphasizes Martin Collacott’s views, valid but one-sided, without the views of other experts.

And like far too much commentary, there is a dearth of numbers, data and evidence beyond the number of parents and grandparents being admitted. Areas where more data is required:

  • number of elderly immigrants and their families seeking to live in a home versus number who remain with their families;
  • benchmarking costs for regular homes vs culturally-appropriate ones;
  • the length of time elderly immigrants currently in elder care since their arrival broken down by immigration class (i.e., what percentage came as family class compared to other classes; and,
  • a more objective study than the usual reliance on the Grady and Grubel studies on the costs of immigrants as this has been contested, validly in my view, by Pendakur and others.

In the midst of this immigration debate, advocates for increasing the supply of culturally sensitive seniors homes continue to press governments to do more to enhance the dignity of elders in their last days, regardless of whether they have contributed a proportionate share of taxes.

Meanwhile, Canadians are left to wrestle with the difficult choice between two conflicting ethical “goods” — being kind to seniors, and being prudent about taxpayers’ ability to pay. It’s a Brexit-style immigration discussion destined to continue for years.

Source: Douglas Todd: Are Canadians prepared to pay for elderly immigrants? | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Push on for ‘culturally appropriate’ seniors homes

2016/06/28 1 Comment

Another good piece by Douglas Todd covering the different perspectives on ‘culturally appropriate’ seniors homes. From my perspective, I can understand this need given the importance of familiar food and that second-language fluency deteriorates with age:

Some critics say taxpayers should not be paying for such ethnically-specific seniors homes.

But Sood and Charan Gill, the dynamic founder of PICS, insist there is a third major reason, in addition to language and cuisine, to create residences specifically for South Asian and other visible-minority seniors: Widespread elder abuse in the immigrant population.

“It’s a huge problem,” says Gill, 80.

“We hear stories of financial and emotional abuse of elders every day here. But no one wants to talk about it,” he says, noting that members of immigrant communities are often ashamed their co-ethnics are not properly taking care of their elders.

Resident Saroj Sood peruses the day's lunch menu at the Guru Nanak Niwas senior home in Surrey. 'Food is most important' as a cultural consideration for the residents.
Resident Saroj Sood peruses the day’s lunch menu at the Guru Nanak Niwas senior home in Surrey. ‘Food is most important’ as a cultural consideration for the residents.RIC ERNST /  PNG

Even though Statistics Canada figures show South Asian grandparents in Canada are eight times more likely to live with their children and grandchildren than ethnic Japanese and Caucasian grandparents, many of Metro’s 250,000 South Asians still yearn to live separate from their offspring.

“Given a chance, these seniors would never leave their homes because of the strong sense of family and affinity towards their culture,” says PICS communications officer Shruti Prakash-Joshi.

“(But) PICS works very closely with seniors and we are witness to some horrific stories relating to financial and other abuse.”

PICS is lobbying the federal and provincial governments for more than $45 million to build a new “Diversity Village” on property it has bought in the Cloverdale area of Surrey. The 140-bed facility would have different sections for seniors of different ethnic backgrounds.

Meanwhile, leaders among Metro Vancouver’s 400,000-member ethnic Chinese population are also pushing for more of their own “culturally appropriate” seniors homes, which would employ Chinese-speaking staff.

As well, Muslim leaders in Burnaby and elsewhere are pressing the province for specialized seniors homes for immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

With 45 per cent of the population of Metro Vancouver born outside the country, Canada’s National Household Survey reports one in six Metro residents do not speak English or French in their homes.

Are Canadians ready to support more ethnic-specific seniors homes?
South Asian seniors who end up in mainstream seniors homes in Canada feel ‘totally isolated,’ says Charan Gill, founder of Progressive Intercultural Community Services. ‘Nobody talks to them. And they don’t get the food they’ve eaten their whole lives. Many give up and die quickly.’

Gill acknowledges providing ethnic-specific food “is a little bit more expensive than giving everybody the same food.”

And he admits that B.C. government’s health authority officials are “resistant” to spend more money than is absolutely necessary on language-specific facilities. He rejects suggestions “culturally sensitive” seniors homes may promote ethnic enclaves.

Former Canadian diplomat Martin Collacott, a Surrey resident, says there is little wrong with ethnic communities creating seniors homes that offer ethnic-specific language and food — as long as the ethnic groups themselves pay for the facilities.

The author of a Fraser Institute report titled Canadian Family Class Immigration: The Parent and Grandparent Component argues it is the federal policy that allows many immigrants to sponsor their parents and grandparents to come to Canada that makes such ethnic-specific seniors homes necessary in the first place.

“The problem with such facilities being provided for sponsored parents and grandparents is that the rationale for bringing them in is that it is traditional for them to live with adult offspring, often to babysit. On this basis it becomes questionable why they would be placed in such care facilities.”

Collacott, who has frequently advised the House of Commons on immigration policy, wrote a paper for The Association of Canadian Studies that showed sponsored parents and grandparents who arrive in their 50s or older are the least likely to work in Canada, pay income taxes or learn French or English.

Despite some opposition, Gill staunchly advocates for governments moving beyond the “Eurocentric model” of seniors homes to the “multicultural model.”

South Asian seniors who end up in mainstream seniors homes in Canada feel “totally isolated,” Gill says. “Nobody talks to them. And they don’t get the food they’ve eaten their whole lives. Many give up and die quickly.”

Remaining confident of his vision, Gill tells stories about South Asian seniors in Metro Vancouver who had to move to “Eurocentric” care homes and who die within months.

Source: Douglas Todd: Push on for ‘culturally appropriate’ seniors homes | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: Ten ways to ease Metro Vancouver’s housing crisis

2016/06/27 Leave a comment

The two immigration-related suggestions by Todd. The first and second ones are easier than the third one, given mobility rights:

Press to end Quebec’s immigrant investor program

Even though the Conservatives stopped Canada’s egregious immigrant investor program in 2014, a form of it still exists in Quebec. But the vast majority of rich immigrants who buy their way into the country by modestly “investing” in Quebec never live in la Belle Province. Most move to Metro Vancouver.

 Combat money laundering, including the property transfer system

Canada’s naive honour system has failed to tax billions of dollars in trans-national property deals. Information sharing agreements between real estate officials, Revenue Canada and the immigration department are desperately needed to catch buyers and sellers who lie about whether they are residents of Canada for income tax purposes. UBC geographer David Ley says a host of money-laundering and tax-evasion schemes, including faking that a property is one’s primary residence, are  getting exposed in London and New York.

Reduce or redirect immigration patterns

In regards to the big picture, Britain and other countries are reducing immigration rates. Studies, like that of UBC geographer Dan Hiebert, show well-off immigrants are a key driver of increases in urban house prices. Nine out of 10 immigrants to B.C. choose Metro Vancouver. Some countries have found ways to encourage immigrants to move to less populated regions.

Source: Douglas Todd: Ten ways to ease Metro Vancouver’s housing crisis | Vancouver Sun

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Instead of atheism, Canadian clergy choose alternative views of God

2016/06/13 Leave a comment

Douglas Todd summarizes the survey, provoked by United Church minister Gretta Vosper, a self-proclaimed atheist:

Admittedly, the survey captures only the views of United Church clergy, who tend to the liberal side of the theological spectrum. But I suspect they illustrate the main ways most people in Canada think about God:

Panentheism: This was the most common view among active United Church of Canada clergy.

Fifty-one per cent of active UC clergy agreed with the statement: “I believe in the existence of god/God, and that God/god is greater than the universe, includes and interpenetrates it.”

Bott believes this statement illustrates the core tenet of panentheism, an emerging form of theism that is often referred to as “natural theology.” Bott acknowledged he counts himself in this group, citing American Marjorie Suchocki among his favourite theologians.

Recognizing panentheism is a term that combines “pantheism” with “theism,” Bott said he understands it to mean “that God participates with all that exists. When changes happen in creation, changes happen in God. I see God in a dance with creation.”

Classic theism: Thirty-four per cent of active UC clergy hold this classic theistic belief in God.

They agreed with the statement: “I believe in one god/God as the creator and ruler of the universe, and further believe that God/god reveals godself/Godself through supernatural revelation.”

Classic theism is “what most people think of when they think of God,” said noted Bible scholar Marcus Borg. It is generally believed such a Supreme Being can supernaturally, unilaterally “intervene” in the world.

Deism: Deism was popular in 19th-century among European intellectuals. It basically teaches that God created the laws of the natural universe, like a clockmaker makes a clock, and then stood back and let it tick away.

Only 2.3 per cent of active United Church clergy supported the deistic statement: “I believe in the existence of God/god on the evidence of reason and nature only, and reject supernatural revelation.”

God only as a metaphor: Some people think God is at least partly a metaphor for love, truth or beauty.

But just 2.1 per cent of active United Church clergy agreed with the statement: “God is solely a metaphor for what is good in the human condition.”

The finding suggests that, while many think God is an ineffable entity only understood through metaphors, United Church clergy don’t therefore buy that God is not real.

Agnosticism: Only 1.2 per cent of active United Church clergy chose the agnostic option — that they “neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of God/god, as it can be neither known nor proven.”

Atheism: Fewer than one in 100 active United Church clergy were atheists. Only 0.7 per cent agreed: “I do not believe in the existence of God/gods.”

Together these results provides evidence that Vosper is much more rare in the United Church of Canada than she suggests.

It’s why many say that, while there is nothing wrong with “not believing in God/gods,” it’s another thing to proclaim atheism while being paid as a Christian minister.

Nevertheless, Vosper has brought in lawyers to fight the confidential review of her ordination that’s underway in the Toronto region of the United Church. So far, her lawyers have failed to stop it.

The United Church is an extremely tolerant organization when it comes to clergy’s spiritual beliefs. So anything can happen yet.

But if Vosper ends up losing her public platform as a clergywoman in a Christian denomination, she will also lose much of her novelty value to journalists.

She will become just another one of the 4.5 million Canadians who are atheists.

Source: Instead of atheism, Canadian clergy choose alternative views of God | Vancouver Sun

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