Todd: Little-known program dominates Canada’s massive guest-worker scheme

2024/09/16 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, Olsen didn’t check the data (Temporary Residents: Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and International Mobility Program (IMP) Work Permit Holders – Monthly IRCC Updates – Canada – International Mobility Program work permit holders by province/territory, intended occupation (4-digit NOC 2011) and year in which permit(s) became effective). Had some time to look at the construction sector, highlighting that there has been an increase at the supervisory level (B):
Union leader Mark Olsen is frustrated Canadians know almost nothing about Ottawa’s international mobility program. And he’s afraid company bosses want it that way.

The program is the vast federal guest worker program that now brings by far the most newcomers into Canada — with more than one million in the country now.

It’s also the program that Olsen believes makes it most easy for employers to exploit guest workers, which in turn harms Canadian workers.

As the western manager of the Laborers International Union of North America, Olsen said that the international mobility program is drawing more than four times as many guest workers as the more discussed temporary foreign workers program.

Two weeks ago Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to modestly trim the temporary foreign workers program by up to 80,000 workers after protests that it was responsible for a high number of low-wage workers at a time of high unemployment among Canadian young people.

An Angus Reid Institute poll released Tuesday shows that 56 per cent of Canadians believe the Liberals are bringing in too many temporary workers, which they think is making it harder to access housing and obtain decent wages.

Olsen believes Trudeau’s gesture with the temporary foreign workers program is window-dressing. If the past is a guide, he said, the federal government and corporations will just use the decline of that program to funnel more foreign workers into the expanding international mobility program.

The government’s strategy, Olsen said, will continue to “institutionalize foreign worker exploitation, discrimination and abuse, distort the labour market, suppress Canadians’ wages and lead to a loss of training opportunities and jobs for Canadian workers, including Indigenous people and women.”

There is a need, Olsen said, for qualified people to come from other countries to work in Canada. That’s especially the case in Canada’s gigantic construction industry, which employs most members of the Laborers International Union of North America. But guest workers, Olsen said, must be invited to the country in a way that’s fair both to them and to Canadian workers.

The major defect in the international mobility program, Olsen said, is that, unlike the temporary foreign workers program, it doesn’t require Canadian employers to provide evidence to the government that they’re unable to find a Canadian to do the job.

“This has made the IMP (international mobility program) ripe for abuse of both the system and the temporary worker, and has fuelled explosive growth under the program,” said Olsen.

A second problem with the international mobility program is that employers are allowed to pay the foreign workers significantly less than they pay Canadians in the same job, whether they’re in the field of high tech, health care, retail or construction. That’s because bosses only have to commit to paying foreign workers a wage that is higher, even only slightly higher, than the median Canadian salary, which Olsen said is in the $23-an-hour range.

That leads to international mobility program workers often doing the same tasks as Canadian workers at far lower wages.

Obviously, Olsen said, the big wage disparity hands bosses an incentive to hire cheap labour through that program, rather than seek Canadian applicants.

“It results in employers paying substandard wages and often no benefits to foreign workers,” Olsen said in a joint memo with Eric Olsen, his brother, who is the political director for the western arm of Laborers International Union, which has about 400,000 members in the U.S. and 150,000 in Canada. “It also allows employers to pay Canadian workers less than the market would ordinarily require, distorting the market.”

The B.C. Building Trades this year put together a report on migration, with case studies showing how B.C. employers paid foreign workers much less than Canadians during construction of the Golden Ears Bridge, the Murray River mine project and the Canada Line.

Since 2015, the Liberal government has dramatically increased the number of temporary residents in Canada, to about 2.8 million. Immigration Minister Marc Miller said this year that nine per cent are in the temporary foreign workers program stream, 44 per cent are employed in Canada through the international mobility program category and another 43 per cent are foreign students, most of whom are allowed to work.

However, Mark Olsen is on to something when he worries ordinary Canadians have no idea about the country’s many guest worker programs — and the often crucial differences between them.

Canada’s migration system is complex and confusing. Even politicians, pundits and pollsters often make comments that suggest they mistakenly think the temporary foreign workers program is the only Canadian stream for “temporary” workers. It doesn’t help that the term, international mobility program, is itself fuzzy.

In the face of the public’s ignorance, which Mark Olsen believes companies capitalize on, the leaders of the Laborers International Union want to reform Canada’s guest-worker programs.

One top recommendation is that bosses using the international mobility program must prove there is a need for each guest worker. Such declarations exist with the temporary foreign workers program, when employers fill out a document called a labour market impact assessment.

And since news reports frequently arise about abuse and deception in regard to the rules of the guest worker system, the union says “there must be proper enforcement and significant penalties.”

In addition, union wants all foreign workers in Canada to “have the same rights as Canadian workers” and “be paid the same as Canadian workers in wages and benefits.”

It also recommends providing foreign workers “a pathway to Canadian citizenship.” As the union’s policy paper says: “If these workers are good enough to be invited here to build our country, they are good enough to stay and build their families and communities.”

In regard to these last two reforms, Mark Olsen acknowledged that there is sometimes resistance from members of his union.

Given changing public sentiment in Canada, that’s not surprising. One key finding in this week’s Angus Reid poll is that only 24 per cent of Canadians believe guest workers should be offered a route to citizenship.

Nevertheless, Mark Olsen said after he talks to members about the union recommendations on guest workers, they invariably end up embracing the union’s viewpoint, which he describes as “respect for all.”

Source: Little-known program dominates Canada’s massive guest-worker scheme

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Todd: Do women, people of colour get fewer votes in Canada? New studies say no

2024/08/12 Leave a comment

Interesting US study, broadly applicable to Canada:

Given the Olympics are up and running, it’s fitting to reflect on how the image that cartoonists most often use to show that women and ethnic minorities have a disadvantage is one of the hurdles.

The illustrations recur: Of women and people of colour literally having to jump over more and higher hurdles than white people or men to reach victory in their fields, particularly politics.

Now that U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, whose mother was born in India and father in Jamaica, is the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, media outlets are especially filled with talk about gender and racial barriers.

But the clichéd metaphor of an unfair hurdles race is in need of an update in light of studies showing that in almost all cases and places women and people of colour compete evenly.

Last month, researchers at the University of Oxford unveiled the findings of the most extensive analysis yet performed on how people vote in view of candidates’ ethnicity and gender.

Lead by Sanne van Oosten, the team looked for the patterns in 43 different sociological experiments in the U.S., Europe and Canada of voter preference over the 10-year period ending in 2022.

The experiments typically involved presenting respondents with profiles of fictional political candidates, while randomly varying the candidates’ race or ethnicity. There were in total more than 310,000 observations of respondents’ preferences.

“Our meta-analysis concludes that, on average, voters do not discriminate against minoritized politicians,” van Oosten said. “In fact, women and Asians have a significant advantage compared to male and white candidates.”

Van Oosten, who had earlier been appalled by gender-based criticism of Hillary Clinton and the race-based undermining of Barack Obama, considers the results good news — for Harris and other candidates who are female and/or of colour.

The researcher has been surprised by the dearth of media interest, however, given that her earlier study of how the public can stereotype Muslim candidates as homophobic received international coverage.

“One journalist at a very highly esteemed newspaper even literally said to me: ‘People aren’t interested in good news’,” van Oosten said on social media.

The study by van Oosten, Liza Mügge and Daphne van der Pas doesn’t deny that there is a small minority of voters who have racist or sexist attitudes. But it does find most voters aren’t negatively impacted by a candidate being female or a person of colour. Indeed, it’s often perceived as a positive.

Here how the authors put it in their meta-analysis:

• “Voters do not assess racial/ethnic minority candidates differently than their majority (white) counterparts.”

• In regard to Asian candidates in the U.S.: “Voters assess them slightly more positively than majority (white) candidates.”

• “A meta-analysis on gender demonstrates that voters assess women candidates more positively than men candidates.”

• When voters from minority ethnic groups share the same ethnicity as the candidate, they positively “assess them 7.9 percentage points higher” than white candidates.

• Even in “patriarchal” societies, such as in Jordan, men will vote for a female candidate over a male if she shares the voter’s ethnicity.

The comprehensive Oxford study also cites the work of Anthony Kevins, of Utrecht University, who found across the U.S., Britain and Canada there is no sign that voters will refrain from marking an X on a ballot for a candidate because of their gender or ethnic background.

In Canada, Kevins found only one distinct bias: That members of the Canadian political left have, all other things being equal, “a higher likelihood of voting for the East Asian candidate.”

The University of Toronto’s Randy Besco, author of Identities And Interests: Race, Ethnicity and Affinity Voting, said in an interview that on average racial minority candidates don’t get fewer votes in Canada.

However, in one specific category, “racial minorities running for the Conservative Party do get less votes.”

The broader finding in the work of Besco and others is about significant so-called “affinity voting,” in which people elect members of their same identity group.

“Chinese and South Asians showed preference for their own ethnic group compared to a white candidate,” Besco said. And they also preferred to vote for members of other minority groups over white candidates. “But this preference was weaker than same-ethnic preference.”

Asked whether Canadians who are white also engage in affinity politics, by tending to mark their ballots for Canadians who are white, van Oosten said in an interview there is no indication white majorities in Britain and Canada make a point of voting for their ethnic in-group. But in the U.S., she said there is an inclination for some white people to do that.

In regard to Canadian voting trends around gender, Besco pointed to the work of his colleague, Semra Sevi of L’Université de Montréal, whose team wrote a paper titled, Do Women Get Less Votes? No.

Sevi et al studied the gender breakdown of over 21,000 candidates in all Canadian federal elections since 1921, when women first ran for seats in Parliament.

The researchers determined, in the 1920s, women were at a 2.5 percentage point disadvantage to men.

But in recent decades, Canadian voters have shown no anti-female bias.

What then explains the disparities on gender and ethnicity among MPs in the House of Commons?

In 2023, about 31 per cent of MPs were female, even though women make up half the Canadian population. Jerome Black and Andrew Griffith also wrote in Public Policy that MPs of colour comprised about 16 per cent of House of Commons members in 2021, while visible minorities made up about 20 per cent of all citizens.

Virtually all the researchers cited in this article maintain that such variance, in Canada and around the world, is not the result of voters being prejudiced against women or members of ethnic minorities.

It’s more about who decides to test the political waters.

The researchers strongly suggest the widespread incorrect belief that voters are prejudiced contributes to fewer minority and female candidates putting their names forward, or being supported, at the nomination stage.

As van Oosten puts it, “the demand” is definitely there for women and people of colour in office. But “the supply” often isn’t, she says, in large part because of misplaced fears about racist and sexist attitudes among the electorate.

In other words, as a society we need to stop discouraging women and people of colour from running for politics — and we can start by throwing away outdated images meant to show they have to jump over extra hurdles.

Source: Do women, people of colour get fewer votes in Canada? New studies say no

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , ,

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

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

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

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

Particularly in regard to asylum seekers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Vancouver’s Langara College among those bracing for drastic plunge in foreign students

2024/07/29 Leave a comment

The impacts of the international student cap being felt:

…At Langara College, president Burns said in her message to faculty that while foreign student applications are down 79 per cent for the January term, they are also down nine per cent for the fall term, which begins in just six weeks.

Burns attributed the declines to several factors.

They include Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s promise in January to decrease the number of study visas it hands out by 35 per cent this year compared to last.

The B.C. government has also been making reforms — including instituting a new requirement that no more than 30 per cent of students at public post-secondary schools can be foreign students. There are 217,000 foreign students in the province’s post-secondary institutions.

This year both the federal and B.C. governments are expressing the need to temper the record volume of foreign students because of the impact on runaway housing costs, particularly rents, as well as on infrastructure and social services, such as health care.

On a national level, there are mixed signals about the pace at which foreign students are entering Canada.

Last year the country had about 1.1 million foreign students, a jump of three times from when Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015.

Despite Miller pledging to cap study visa approvals at 360,000 for this year, immigration department data shows it issued more study visas in the first five months of this year than it did in the first five months of last year, which broke records.

According to numbers from the immigration department, Canada has handed out 217,000 international study permits in the first five months of 2024. In the same period in 2023, 200,000 were handed out.

In B.C., however, study visa numbers are slightly reduced. In the first five months of 2024 the immigration department has issued 40,000 visas to those who say they will study in B.C. That’s down from about 45,000 in the same period last year.

In response to Postmedia’s questions, the immigration department said via email: “It is premature to claim the cap isn’t working.”

The ministry noted the cap doesn’t apply to students who apply to extend their studies from within the country, nor to those attending kindergarten-to-Grade 12 programs. It also said it expected visa approvals will go down in the months of August and September.

Andrew Griffith, a former immigration department director who now writes independently about migration, says he believes overall foreign student numbers will begin broadly declining soon.

A crucial government data table, he says, reveals that the volume of people around the world inquiring on the immigration department’s website about getting a Canadian study visa is down 26 per cent this year compared to last.

For instance, there were far fewer inquiries about obtaining a Canadian study visa in June of this year: 68,000  compared to 110,000 in June of 2023….

Source: Vancouver’s Langara College among those bracing for drastic plunge in foreign students

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Douglas Todd: Canada should warn guest worker, student applicants they’re taking a big gamble

2024/06/26 Leave a comment

Good comments by Kurland, Skuterud and Lee:

….Their plight is the direct fault of Ottawa, say migration specialists.

“Over the past four years the number of people with temporary status in Canada has skyrocketed” because of an executive decision from the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, says Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer.

“So there is now a chicken in the python problem,” he said.

“People with study permits, and then post-graduate work permits, who can’t qualify for permanent resident status face taking an airplane ride home in shame and poverty. Or they’ll find a way to stay.”

Kurland expects to see “increasing trends of marriages of convenience, refugee claims and applications for humanitarian and compassionate relief.”

A sign of what’s to come might have already arisen at Seneca College in Toronto, where asylum claims from international students increased from 300 in 2022 to almost 700 in 2023. At Kitchener’s Conestoga College, claims jumped from 106 to 450 during that same period.

University of Waterloo economics professor Mikal Skuterud, a specialist in labour, said “lots of non-permanent residents in Canada are seeing their permits expire and the government is worried that large numbers have no intention of leaving the country.”

The Liberal government created the predicament a few years ago, said Skuterud, when it signalled to the world, particularly those with low skills, the easiest way to become a citizen of Canada is to show up as a temporary resident.

“For migrants, Canada’s immigrant selection system now looks like a lottery, in which a work or study permit is the ticket. That’s a big problem. And it wasn’t like this before 2021.”

The Liberal government made the mistake of dismantling the country’s skills-based immigration system because of a “post-pandemic obsession with labour shortages, which is economic nonsense fuelled by corporate Canada,” Skuterud said.

George Lee, an immigration lawyer in Burnaby, said the “federal government created this problem: They’ve brought in too many people. The government wanted to address labour shortages. But now they say,  ‘It’s too much!’ In effect the government is blaming itself.”

Last week, StatCan reported 2.8 million temporary residents in Canada, comprising a record 6.8 per cent of the population. That’s up from 3.5 per cent two years ago.

More than one million are foreign students, most with work permits. Others are classified as “temporary foreign workers” or “international mobility” workers. Another 360,000 are asylum claimants.

In light of Immigration Minister Marc Miller promising this spring to reduce the number of study visas, partly in response to the pressure on housing prices and social services, Kurland said Canada should warn would-be migrants they’re taking a big gamble.

“They now face a loss of their significant investment in time and money. The problem is that the majority of people are unaware that every (newcomer) takes the risk that Canada’s immigration regulations may be changed at any time,” said Kurland, who publishes the newsletter, Lexbase, which previously reported on how Canada’s border services are better tracking when people actually exit the country.

Canada’s problem with an influx of temporary residents is different from what’s facing the U.S. and Europe. Those regions have experienced waves of millions of undocumented migrants. But, for the most part, Canada has explicitly welcomed the record flow of newcomers, most of whom are unskilled.

Skuterud questions the immigration minister’s May announcement that he would like to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada simply by turning them into permanent residents, particularly through the provinces’ so-called nominee programs.

“The irony of all this is that the government is providing more ad hoc openings to permanent residency to relieve the bulging non-permanent population.” It’s thereby “inadvertently” encouraging more people to start in Canada on a temporary basis with the dream of staying forever, he said.

The surge of temporary residents has not only exacerbated Canada’s housing crisis, Skuterud said rapid population growth, almost entirely from international migration, correlates with Canadian wages staying stagnant.

Lee, who came to Canada on a study visa from China in 1992, supports Canada’s efforts to bring high numbers of international students to the country, saying they’re primed to become engaged citizens since they have learned the culture, to speak English or French, and have developed Canadian-based job skills.

The problem, Lee said, is that when Ottawa tried to address a perceived labour shortage, it went too far and embraced too many newcomers at once. “We need a more balanced approach.”

Kurland suggests Ottawa adopt a “consumer protection” model to more honestly process people who want to move to Canada.

Canada’s immigration department, he said, should ask people who apply online for temporary residency: “If you are planning to possibly immigrate to Canada, do you acknowledge that your plan may fail if Canada immigration law and regulations were to change?”

Skuterud offers a different way forward. He says Ottawa has recently been over-promoting a “two-step immigration” scheme that pushes aspiring immigrants to first enter the country on a temporary basis.

He would like the government to return to emphasizing the more traditional economic-class pathway to permanent resident status, which relied on a transparent, above-board ranking system to select candidates.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada should warn guest worker, student applicants they’re taking a big gamble

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MIREMS: Diaspora and the Representation of Home Conflicts in Canada’s Ethnic Media

2024/05/10 Leave a comment

Detailed analysis of the major diaspora issues and how they play out in ethnic media in contrast with mainstream and home country media. Some groups have greater diversity of opinions and coverage than others. Overview below:

This discussion paper delves into the reactions of ethnic media in Canada to four distinct conflicts: the alleged Chinese interference in Canadian elections, the assassination of a Sikh leader in Canada, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. By comparing and contrasting the coverage of these events in Chinese, South Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern Canadian media outlets, the paper aims to shed light on the critical role that ethnic media plays in shaping the mindset of Canadian citizens.


The paper argues that ignoring grassroots community media can have significant consequences on the mindset of Canadian citizens, as evidenced by the reactions to these conflicts in ethnic media outlets. This assertion is grounded in several well-established theories in the field of media and social communications analysis, including agenda-setting theory, framing theory, uses and gratifications theory, and cultivation theory.


The case studies presented in the paper provide compelling evidence for the application of these theories in the context of ethnic media in Canada. The chapter on Chinese media’s reaction to alleged election interference reveals how these outlets frame the issue in ways that prioritize the concerns and perspectives of the Chinese Canadian community, potentially influencing their political engagement and attitudes towards the Canadian government.


Similarly, the chapter on South Asian media’s response to the assassination of a Sikh leader highlights the role of these outlets in shaping the community’s understanding of the event and its implications for Canada-India relations. The analysis of Eastern European media’s coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates how these outlets serve the specific informational and cultural needs of their audiences, providing perspectives and narratives that may differ from those found in mainstream Canadian media.
Finally, the chapter on Middle Eastern media’s reaction to the Israel-Palestine conflict underscores the power of these outlets in cultivating distinct worldviews and shaping public discourse within their communities.


In conclusion, the paper serves as a call to action for greater attention to and engagement with ethnic media outlets in Canada. By recognizing the power of these grassroots community media in shaping the mindset of Canadian citizens, we can work towards a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of how global conflicts and events are impacting our diverse nation. Future research should continue to explore the role of ethnic media in shaping public opinion, while policymakers must consider the perspectives and concerns expressed in these outlets when crafting inclusive and responsive policies.

Source: Diaspora and the Representation of Home Conflicts in Canada’s Ethnic Media

And Douglas Todd’s article on the report:

Canada’s ethnic media is “the canary in the coal mine,” offering warnings about everything from foreign interference to psychological stresses on newcomers, whether from Iran, China, Russia, India, South Korea, the Middle East or beyond, says Andrés Machalski, president of Multilingual International Media Research (MIREMS).

But governments aren’t taking advantage of the fertile resource. Their lack of understanding of the powerful role played by ethnic media has “enabled Chinese and Indian agents to (impact) public opinion … and provided an open door to homeland subversion of Canadian democracy,” says Machalski.

MIREMS’ 54-page report maintains the media outlets are invaluable for understanding what is going on in scores of diaspora communities.

The report goes so far as to suggest many newcomers suffer from anxiety and depression associated with “complex PTSD” as they try to navigate news and views from their homelands with their new lives in Canada.

Although many of the views expressed in ethnic media are predictable, there is some range of opinion, says the report by MIREMS, which tracks more than 800 media outlets in 30 languages in Canada and worldwide….

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada’s ethnic media reveal tough realities

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Douglas Todd: Anti-stigma campaigns need a complete rethink

2024/05/04 Leave a comment

Social norms often change through stigma as the smoking example illustrates. For the most part, the same phenomenon with overt racism, sexism and the like but as we see south of the border, limits to its effectiveness:

…More importantly, slavish commitment to anti-stigma theory is also out of place when we realize we live in a society, if you think about it for more than a few seconds, that is quite adept at stigmatizing certain behaviours.

Like cigarette smoking.

In the past 50 years North America’s public-health community has used the power of stigma to great effect. It launched anti-smoking advertising campaigns, complete with grisly death data, that eventually rendered smoking uncommon. Something similar happened with drunk driving. And it’s widely agreed that’s been a good thing.

So there is much to learn from the professor whom Bonnie Henry hired as a consultant. In their article in The Atlantic, Caulkins and Humphreys actually highlight B.C.’s policies, because this province has gone further than just about any place in North America in making harm reduction, and anti-stigma, the centre of its drug-response strategy.

B.C. “has decriminalized drugs, offers universal health care, and provides a range of health services to drug users, including clinic-provided heroin and legal provision of powerful opioids for unsupervised use,” write Caulkins and Humphreys.

“And yet its rate of drug-overdose fatalities is nearly identical to that of South Carolina, which relies on criminal punishments to deter use, and provides little in the way of harm-reduction services.”

Caulkins and Humphreys are not trying to suggest there is no place for empathy for those in the clutches of illicit drugs. As they say, when it comes to people who are addicted, it’s worth remembering the teaching, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” The problem is the behaviour, not the person.

And to be clear, no single strategy will end today’s scourge of drug deaths. That means there is a role for safer supply and harm reduction. And there is huge space for compassion.

But there is also a time for social deterrence, as there has been with cigarette smoking. There is a time to reinforce the message that “one pill can kill.”

To put it directly, fentanyl and its ilk should be shunned.

Source: Douglas Todd: Anti-stigma campaigns need a complete rethink

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Douglas Todd: Clever film brings home exploitation of foreign students in Canada

2024/04/30 Leave a comment

Of note, timely:

Vancouver filmmaker Shubham Chhabra throws a lot into his short movie Cash Cows about international students from India stressing to make a go of it in Canada.

There’s the student, Rohit Sharma, whose boss in Canada doesn’t intend to pay him because he thinks he’s doing him a favour. There are the five male international students sharing one small basement suite in Surrey because rents are extreme. There is confusion about handing over up to $45,000 to dubious immigration consultants, but still needing jobs as security guards and pizza-makers.

Being a foreign student while working in well-off Canada, en route to obtaining prized status as a permanent resident, isn’t exactly “living the dream,” even though one character in the film claims that it is.

Cash Cows is fictional but based on the experiences of Chhabra, who came to B.C. in 2015, as well as his closest friends from India, source of Canada’s largest cohort of international students.

The film sets its dramatic-comedy tone from the get-go, with opening images of unsuspecting cows being ground down and devoured as juicy hamburger or steaks.

While international students face multiple stresses in Canada, including extreme tuition fees and often shoddy educations, Cash Cows highlight the way they’re exploited by employers. It’s a problem that has been spreading since the federal Liberal government increased the number of international students in Canada to 1.3 million from 225,000 over the last decade.

The pivotal scene in Cash Cows, which has been shown at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and won an award for best screenplay, features a foul-mouthed boss, Jaspreet Singh, excoriating Rohit for daring to expect to actually be paid for working more than six months as a night security guard at his car dealership, called Brown Brothers.

‘I’m doing you a favour. Why the f–k do you expect everything for free?” shouts the boss, who has agreed to sponsor Rohit for permanent resident status. The employer warns the student that if he asks too many questions he could have him deported. No longer naïve, Rohit realizes he has to endure indentured labour.

Cash Cows is fundamentally about how some employers, and in some ways politicians and educational institutions, are treating foreign students and other temporary residents as “commodities rather than as a sustainable human resource,” Chhabra said.

While the filmmaker personally feels it’s a “privilege” to have studied at Langara College and now be working as an assistant director for the TV series Family Law, he wants his short film, and a longer documentary scheduled for release this spring, to help viewers understand the spectrum of experiences of international students.

He’s aware an untold number of employers are taking advantage of foreign students, whose families back home, like his, will often sacrifice a great deal so their offspring can gain a foothold in Canada.

In India, the vision of getting into Canada on a study visa “is super-idealized in movies, TV shows and music videos,” Chhabra said. While unpleasant truths are sometimes mentioned in India’s media, most young people fly to Canada with incredible optimism.

Reality can be shocking for many, Chhabra says, “despite Canada being one of the best countries in the world.” Exploitive employers in Canada have many schemes, including not paying student employees at all, or expecting them to repay some of their salary.

“One of my friends was stuck in a seven-year-employment scam, where he was paying back almost 30 per cent of his paycheque.” He did so, Chhabra said, because the boss had promised to sponsor him as an immigrant.

“It’s 100 per cent illegal,” said Chhabra. When the friend obtained permanent residency, “he quit the job the first day he could. He got his trucker’s licence, which is what he wanted to do, and he’s now super-happy, making real money, working hard.”

Chhabra’s own story inspired the key conflict depicted in Cash Cows. The manager at a fast-food outlet he was working for in Vancouver was finding convoluted excuses to underpay him, alleging he was in training. Chhabra challenged him.

“He gave me this long spiel about how grateful I should be. And I went back to work,” Chhabra said.

Another moment in Cash Cows is based on the experience that one of his friends had as a security guard. The student, already unpaid, was forced by his boss to come up with the money to compensate for a vandal smashing an automobile window with a rock while he was on night duty.

In addition to the scams featured in Cash Cows, reports are arising of many others in Canada. They include employers taking secret kickbacks from foreign students and other non-permanent residents to create jobs for them, some of which don’t really exist. Another controversy emerged this week, with news of a 650 per cent increase in five years in the number of foreign students applying for refugee status.

In the midst of all the schemes and conflicts, which are dividing opinion among Canada’s South Asian population, Chhabra said he hopes Cash Cows helps viewers understand the different ways young people on study visas are trying to survive and prosper in a new land.

He intended to do so while avoiding heavy-handedness: “I wanted to make something light-hearted, yet grounded in reality, with a little message.”

One way the film has a bit of fun is by bringing alive the way many foreign students end up crammed together in tiny basement suites.

That is exactly what Chhabra and his friends had to do. For a long time Chhabra and two male friends shared the same double bed, sleeping in shifts and sometimes at the same time. While Chhabra’s Canadian girlfriend has described the practice as “so weird,”  he says it’s considered fine in Indian culture.

More seriously, in the past year Chhabra worries the national discussion of migration in Canada has hit a “tipping point,” where non-permanant residents such as foreign students are now being seen in a more pessimistic light, particularly in regard to contributing to pressure on housing and rental prices.

And while Chhabra wants to fight against the negativity, in some ways he can understand why in January Immigration Minister Marc Miller imposed a two-year cap on study permits.

“We see all the negatives, like everyone else,” said Chhabra. “And we want to work together to make it better.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Clever film brings home exploitation of foreign students in Canada

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Douglas Todd: Canada’s tough-talking immigration minister makes headlines, but how much is spin?

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

More than spin IMO given his actions to cap international students, reduce the number of Temporary Foreign Workers, and cap at 500,000 Permanent Residents in 2025 (albeit after the election).

Not far or fast enough, but the first Liberal minister of immigration to tackle some of the problems his predecessors created and make life somewhat easier for a possible Conservative successor:

It’s rare when a politician criticizes the record of his own party, but that’s the approach Immigration Minister Marc Miller has been adopting.

The teenage friend of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become quotable as he goes after the “perverse effects” and “lack of integrity” in the migration system that his Liberal predecessors — John McCallum, Ahmed Hussen, Marco Mendocino and Sean Fraser — built up upon gaining power nine years ago.

When Trudeau appointed Miller in June 2023 he started off sounding like every other Liberal immigration minister — trotting out well-worn cliches about how record levels of permanent and non-permanent residents would replace retiring baby boomers and deliver economic opportunity for all.

But Miller’s tune suddenly changed last fall, along with polling results. They showed a huge shift to the federal Conservatives, a switch pundits attribute almost entirely to the rapidly increasing cost of living, especially in housing and rents, which economists say links to unparalleled population growth.

“There should be an honest conversation about what the rise in international migration means for Canada as we plan ahead,” Miller said last month.

His call for national frankness seemed a refreshing change from the Liberal habit of reinforcing English Canada’s historical taboo against debating migration policy.

At the same time he promised to decrease the number of temporary residents to five per cent of the population, from 6.5 per cent. The target for new permanent residents, meanwhile, would remain 500,000, almost double that of the Stephen Harper era.

Miller also had something blunt to say in regard to the way his own party increased the number of foreign students in Canada — hiking totals to 1.028 million last year from 352,000 in 2015.

Before promising to cap new undergraduate study permits for next year at 360,000, which he maintained is a 35 per cent reduction from the year before, Miller had admitted reluctance to reduce Canada’s “very lucrative” foreign student scheme.

Yet he conceded it “comes with some perverse effects, some fraud in the system, some people taking advantage of what is seen to be a backdoor entry into Canada.”

Miller also said he would curb the country’s dependence on the “cheap labour” supplied by guest workers, which includes international students, most of whom, unlike in most countries, are permitted to work while aiming to become citizens.

Miller appears to be taking heed that bank economists have pronounced that Canada’s migration-fuelled population expansion of 3.2 per cent last year is killing productivity rates, lowering real wages, and hiking the cost of rents and housing.

A pace of growth above three per cent has “never been seen in any developed country” since the 1950s, says Frederic Payeur, a demographer at Quebec’s provincial statistics agency.

Economists increasingly complain the unnecessary reliance on temporary foreign labour leads to lower wages in Canada, which are falling far behind other nations.

“The volumes (of non-permanent resident admissions) are a byproduct of a lack of integrity in the system,” Miller said.

He also talks of “punishing the bad actors,” including employers, immigration consultants and temporary workers who exploit Canada’s welcome.

“We want to attack the fraud in Labour Market Impact Assessments, which in some places I think is rampant,” he said, referring to the way some bosses falsely claim (sometimes after taking kickbacks) that they must hire a foreign national because no Canadian is available to do the job.

There are more such stark Millerisms out there. And they sound vital. But could they be hollow?

More than a few wonder if Miller and his party could be indulging in a new strategy of political spin. Of saying one thing and doing another.

It’s quite plausible. Britain’s long-standing Conservative government is being accused of just that. It held onto power in 2019 by promising to reduce migration levels. But last year net migration to the U.K., population 67 million, soared to an all-time record of 745,000.

But it’s also possible that Miller — who attended College Jean-de-Brebeuf with Trudeau and travelled with him on adventures to Africa and beyond — has delivered the unpleasant news to Trudeau that his one-dimensional strategy to rescue our sputtering economy by pumping up population growth is doing Canadians and newcomers more harm than good.

Whatever the motivation for Miller’s change of tone, there are reasons to be skeptical. For instance, historically, the government is promising only a modest proposal to reduce temporary resident numbers. And the Quebec MP is delaying bringing in the needed legislation to the fall.

As well, when Miller said he would take three years to trim numbers to a level that would still be much higher than before the Liberals came to power, it opens up a lot of political wiggle room. The end date for the cut would be at least 18 months after the next election, which is scheduled for October 2025.

In the meantime, it’s hard for even Miller to keep up with the catapulting numbers. Two weeks ago he said there were 2.5 million temporary residents in Canada. But, last Wednesday, Statistics Canada said the country actually had 2.7 million such guest workers, asylum seekers and foreign students.

We will have to wait and see if Miller’s self-critical rhetoric provides his party with a bump in the polls.

The harsh reality is the Liberals have strayed far from the numerical “sweet spot” that Scotia Bank says is necessary “when it comes to economic immigration — where everyone is better off over time.” Canada, population 41 million, has already blown past such a sweet spot “by multiples,” says the bank.

With so many Canadians, especially young adults, facing stagnant wages and housing distress, National Bank economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme have gone so far as to actually suggest a sweet spot.

“At this point,” they say, “we believe our country’s annual total population growth should not exceed 300,000 to 500,000.”

That is a far cry from what StatCan reported last week: that in 2023 the country’s surging population increased by 1.3 million, 98 per cent of it from international migration.

Is Miller willing to make a serious dent in such totals? If so, that could offer newcomers and Canadians more hope, especially in regard to the cost of shelter, but also as an antidote to sluggish wages.

The minister can say all he wants but, as with all of us, he will ultimately be judged by whether his words correspond to his actions.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canada’s tough-talking immigration minister makes headlines, but how much is spin?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Douglas Todd: Will a new Canadian law lead to less inflammatory speech against Jews?

2024/03/07 Leave a comment

Some good examples of inflammatory speech. As to C-63, most of the commentary notes the sensible aspects (protecting children) and over-reach elsewhere:

…Before examining fraught aspects of Christian and Muslim tradition, the question has to be asked why notorious Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui, an activist on behalf of Palestinians, has not been prosecuted for hate speech?

That’s despite saying in an October speech: “Allah, take care of these Zionist aggressors. Allah, take care of the enemies of the people of Gaza. Allah, identify them all, then exterminate them. And don’t spare any of them!”

Bloc Quebec Party Leader Yves-François Blanchet is among those appalled. He maintains the Montreal imam has escaped jail because of the religious exemption in Canada’s hate speech laws. His party has launched Bill 367 to remove it. And two thirds of Canadians appear to agree, according to a February Leger poll.

Marceau is among the many expressing similar worries about the speech of longtime Victoria Imam Younous Kathrada, whose online sermons have for years denounced Jews, as well as Christians and atheists, as “wrongdoing people” who Muslims should never view as allies.

The South-African-trained B.C. imam has urged followers to “destroy the enemies of Islam, and annihilate the heretics and the atheists.” He has told members to not vote for “filthy” and “evil” political candidates who support homosexuality or Zionism.

Despite such inflammatory rhetoric, Kathrada, the organization that runs his centre has received a $5,000 grant from the city of Victoria, according to Global News, and Kathrada has never been charged with hate speech nor been publicly criticized by an elected B.C. official…

Source: Douglas Todd: Will a new Canadian law lead to less inflammatory speech against Jews?

Filed under Antisemitism, Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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