HESA: Canada’s Internationalization Strategy [spoiler, not a strategy]

2023/10/12 Leave a comment

Another insightful analysis by HESA that applies to other areas of government than Global Affairs:

A couple of months ago, I was invited to participate in a Global Affairs Canada (GAC) stakeholder roundtable on its Strategic Plan for the next five years.  It was very kind of them to invite me and a few others to be part of the consultation.  It was an interesting window into how the federal government thinks about policy and – especially – strategy.

It seems to me that GAC is in the education business for three reasons.

  1. It has a commercial function in that it exists to make things easier within the limits of existing provincial and federal legislation to assist in increasing educational imports. 
  2. It has a diplomatic/soft power function in that it is, in conjunction with institutions, meant to generate ongoing goodwill towards Canada with current and future world leaders through programs of educational and cultural exchange. 
  3. It has an immigration function is there to promote immigration via education.  That’s been the policy of the Government of Canada for a decade and a half now. 

But instead of talking about goals and the role of GAC in these three areas, the department chose to jump straight into talking about four “pillars”: digital marketing, diversification (in the sense of widening the international student base beyond India and China), scholarships and education agents. The background papers for those four pillars are available here (there are also another 9 or so background papers here, and kudos to the folks at GAC for making all of this public…it would be normal in other countries, but in Canada, this counts as a major act of transparency).

I don’t want to dismiss these pillars – they are all important – but they don’t really amount to a strategy.  They are more like issue management.  And as a result, what pervaded the discussion was a mixture of presentism and mission confusion.  By presentism, I mean that the conversation tended to focus on “how do we make minor changes to things we do now” rather than “what should we be trying to achieve in this area”?  This was most evident in the discussion about the small suite of scholarships that that GAC runs such as the Canada-ASEAN Scholarships, the Canadian International Development Scholarships Program, and the CARICOM Faculty Leadership Program.  All the questions were about “how can we make these work better?”, where “better” means “in line with educational objectives with respect to student recruitment diversification.  This was disappointing.   The possibility of aligning these with actual foreign policy objectives, like, say, our vaunted turn to the Indo-Pacific?  Not on the table.

Similarly on the question of digital marketing – the Government of Canada spends $5 million year, spread across 25 countries (not India and China), on “promoting the benefits of studying in Canada as they relate to the primary drivers influencing international students’ choice of study destination” (which,  apparently do notinclude immigration – more on that below).  What was at issue was not “is spending this money a good idea?” either in the sense of “is there any evidence that this advertising is working” or “is there any evidence that there is a market failure here given how much institutions themselves spend on marketing?”.  Just, again, “how could we do it better” in the sense of more “efficiency”, not “should we be doing this at all”?

The issue of agents was a bit more intriguing.  As a host of recent news stories have suggested, there are some serious cases of study permit fraud in Canada and we could certainly stand to gain from being more pro-active and adopting stricter controls on agents as other countries have done through the London Statement (which is a good policy in theory, though I suspect over-rigorous enforcement of such policies are a potential nightmare).  But tucked into the paper is a sentence which suggest that from GAC’s perspective the problem is not fraud per se, but “the wrong kind” of students, to wit:

This advising fee model [among student agents] has led to a lack of quality control with respect to study permit applications, resulting in a huge increase in applications from students who have no chance of being approved for a Study Permit, increasing IRCC workloads and contributing to the backlogs in the system, negatively impacting genuine, high-quality prospective students. [emphasis added]

The sharp-eyed will see links here back to the whole “trusted provider” approach that IRCC is taking, only for some reason it’s taking aim at agents rather than institutions.  In any event, we see here that a group of Ottawa officials have a very clear idea in their heads with respect to “genuine” students vs. fake ones, “high-quality” students vs low-quality ones, etc.   And I’m guessing once again it has something to do with the use of the immigration tack.

Why do I think this?  Well, one very intriguing moment in the consultation happened when a fairly senior GAC employee recounted an event he had recently witnessed in Dubai.  At this event, an unnamed university President said something to the effect “come study at my university and you’ll be on a path to Canadian citizenship”.  This was deeply distressing to the GAC employee.  “That’s not what this program is for”, he huffed (he presumably meant both the PGWP program and pathway to Permanent Residency that follows). 

It was on Zoom and most everyone was muted, but I could still hear a lot of jaws dropping at this.  This is of course exactly what IRCC policy is meant to be for.  GAC might not like the policy that IRCC developed, but since it is responsible for selling the policy overseas, you’d think GAC would understand it.  The fact that not everyone there does, combined with the fact that – as noted above – GAC seems determined to ignore the evidence that immigration is a major factor in student choice, suggests some major communications gaps between Ottawa departments.  Maybe not the most auspicious conditions under which to launch a new strategy.

In short, I found this whole exercise to be well-meaning but not particularly strategic.  The strategy focuses on scholarships for students from other countries but refuse to link these scholarships to broader diplomatic or soft power goals.  The strategy wants to attract students from other countries using digital marketing and so forth but refuses to look at the link to immigration, because GAC and IRCC appear to be at cross-purposes on the subject.  It’s the kind of process that might lead to some tiny little improvements but never seems to have even considered the possibility of a strategy that was genuinely transformative.  I don’t feel that’s GAC’s fault, particularly: rather, boldness and ambition just aren’t in a lot of governments’ DNA these days.  Too bad.

Source: Canada’s Internationalization Strategy

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Ottawa can’t keep up with the fallout from explosion of international sanctions

2023/04/07 Leave a comment

Always about delivery and implementation…

They never thought that a dental chair would constitute military hardware.

But Canadian manufacturers of medical supplies have found themselves fighting to win exemptions from a federal sanction that bans selling Russia anything used in the “manufacture of weapons.”

The measure covers not just tank parts and drones but an array of health-care products, veterinary equipment and even barber chairs — items “not traditionally referred to as weapons,” notes William Pellerin, the lawyer representing the companies.

His clients’ appeal is just one battle being waged behind the scenes of the sweeping set of sanctions Canada has imposed on Russia and Belarus over Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

Complaints have come from Canadians whose money transfers from Russia have been frozen, oligarchs insisting they were listed by mistake, companies unsure if they should deal with a Russia-linked partner and humanitarian groups barred from entering occupied Ukrainian territory.

The sanctions were imposed in response to a Russian military campaign that has laid waste to countless Ukrainian towns and cities, killed thousands of civilians and led to war-crimes charges against President Vladimir Putin himself.

But as the number of sanctions imposed by this country grows “exponentially,” lawyers say the government is ill-prepared to handle the complex fall-out, leading to a backlog at Global Affairs Canada of hundreds of official requests for exemptions and de-listing.

Unlike other countries, the government provides little direction on how to comply with the sanctions and has issued few general exclusions for those who might be needlessly caught in the cross-fire, they say.

“There is a very strong interest on the part of government to be moving quickly,” says Ottawa lawyer John Boscariol. “(But) when there’s not a lot of thought or consultation put into these measures, inevitably you’re going to side-swipe parties that should not really be targets … We haven’t been properly managing the collateral damage.”

The problems extend beyond the impact on those affected by sanctions, some critics charge.

Even as Canada wins kudos as a world leader in wielding the weapon, there’s no requirement to gauge how well sanctions work in changing behaviour, argues an academic expert in the area.

“At no time does Global Affairs have to go through and say ‘Hmm, these names have been on the book for a year, maybe we should look and see if they should still be there, if they’re having an effect,’ ” says Andrea Charron, a University of Manitoba international relations professor. “It’s fire and forget … We don’t measure effectiveness.”

But Global Affairs spokesman Grantly Franklin defended the sanctions regime as “hard-hitting,” yet judicious.

He said the government is already addressing the mounting workload, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing last October an extra $76 million to bolster the sanctions infrastructure. Part of that money will be used to expand the department’s team dealing with the issue, said Franklin.

He declined to answer questions about how many applications Global Affairs has received for exemption permits or for the de-listing of certain sanctions, but stressed the goal of the measures is to put pressure on foreign actors, not Canadians.

“Canadians or individuals in Canada whose money has been frozen … may apply for a permit,” said Franklin by email. “We have a rigorous due diligence process in place to evaluate permit applications, and each application is assessed on a case-by-case basis.”

Sanctions have always been a periodic weapon of Canada’s foreign policy, though often in conjunction with other members of the United Nations. But use of the tool began to proliferate under the previous Conservative government, when former prime minister Stephen Harper targeted Iran and North Korea, then Russia after its initial move into eastern Ukraine and occupation of Crimea.

The trend has picked up pace since then, with Russia the main focus but Canadian sanctions have also been placed on people or entities in China, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Libya, South Sudan, Haiti and Saudi Arabia.

“I’ve been practising in this area since I became a lawyer in the 1990s and … it’s just been growing exponentially,” says Boscariol.

“The use of sanctions by the government of Canada has exploded since the further invasion of Ukraine by Russia,” echoed Pellerin, a partner in the McMillan law firm.

Both lawyers said their clients challenging application of the sanctions declined to be interviewed or named for this story.

As the number of sanctions has grown, so too has their complexity. Many of those aimed at Moscow don’t single out specific companies or individuals, for instance, but bar Canadians — even those living abroad — from providing supplies and services to particular industries, such as the oil and gas and technology sectors.

And though the sanctions may sound straightforward when announced, implementing them in the real world can be messy, the lawyers say.

Part of their work involves applying for those “permits” that exempt individuals or companies from one of the measures. Many of the applications are from Canadian residents who were expecting money to be transferred from relatives or others in Russia, only for the funds to be frozen because the originating bank was sanctioned.

There are Canadians who worked for multinational companies and were laid off because Ottawa’s sanctions won’t let them service Russian clients, and Canadian corporations struggling to figure out whether to do business with a certain firm, the lawyers say.

“A big part of the problem is that there are Russian oligarchs hiding under every rock,” said Pellerin. “It’s rare that a week goes by that we don’t encounter a Russian oligarch behind a company (clients) we’re dealing with.”

The challenge is determining if the sanctioned person’s stake in a particular firm that is based, say, in Dubai, makes that firm a no-go zone, he said.

Other countries have concrete guidelines, with the U.S. specifying that the sanctioned individual must own at least 50 per cent of an asset for the sanctions to apply to it. Canada has no such definition, leaving it up to companies to decide or apply for a permit, said Pellerin.

The U.S. actually has a Treasury Department unit — the Office of Financial Asset Control — that proactively embeds itself in banks and other firms to coach them on how to identify links they might have with sanctioned entities, says Charron. The U.K. and the European Union provide detailed instruction on how the measures apply. Not so Canada, she said, either under Harper or the current Liberal government..

“It’s not Global Affairs that enforces sanctions,” said Charron. “It’s basically you and I and real estate agents and banks. And they get no guidance.”

There are challenges, too, for humanitarian organizations. Those without a formal link to the Red Cross/Red Crescent, the U.N. or the federal government are barred by sanctions from working in places like Russian-occupied Ukraine or Syria. The U.S. and other nations, by comparison, have issued “general licences” to such groups to let them provide aid in those areas, said Boscariol, of the firm McCarthy Tétrault.

Perhaps more contentious are those individuals and entities who claim they have been sanctioned wrongly, based on faulty information or even a misspelled name. Boscariol said he’s been successful in the past getting clients de-listed.

Most of the Russians sanctioned by Canada probably don’t have assets here, but what Ottawa does still matters to them, he said. Different countries sometimes replicate Canada’s measures, while some international banks will not deal with potential clients that have been listed here, even if no other country sanctioned them, said Boscariol.

Pellerin said his firm has decided not to work for sanctioned Russian people or Russian companies, choosing to take a “public stance” against the Putin regime. Even so, he said he frequently is approached by oligarchs seeking his services.

The lawyers helping clients navigate the sanctions acknowledge that it made sense for Canada to act swiftly to impose penalties on Russia. But they say Global Affairs has invested far too few resources into managing the measures, even as its lack of guidance leads to more applications for exemptions and de-listing.

The new funding announced last fall has yet to have any apparent impact, they say.

Pellerin said he’s applied for an exemption permit for his medical-supplies clients, but has yet to receive a decision. (He acknowledges that the sanction may be aimed at goods that could be used by Russian armed forces, not just to make weapons.) The lawyer said he’s had answers quickly in some cases, and waited a year in others.

“The sanctions team at Global Affairs Canada work incredibly hard … in a very stressful and demanding environment,” said Pellerin. But “they’ve not been able to keep up with the large demands that have resulted from the government’s decision to massively increase the use of sanctions.”

Source: Ottawa can’t keep up with the fallout from explosion of international sanctions

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Ottawa can’t show how feminist assistance policy has helped improve gender equality globally, audit says

2023/03/29 Leave a comment

Not surprising, unfortunately. But measuring “softer” social and development outcomes is difficult:

The federal government has not done enough to track whether a policy intended to direct the country’s billions of dollars in annual development aid toward improving gender equality abroad has actually helped women and girls, a report from Auditor-General Karen Hogan says.

Ms. Hogan’s report, tabled Monday, says Global Affairs Canada could not demonstrate how the roughly $3.5-billion in bilateral development aid it provides each year to low- and middle-income countries had delivered on its commitments under the federal Feminist International Assistance Policy.

The Auditor-General took aim at GAC’s information practices, which she said it had not set up to monitor long-term results.

“These weaknesses make it impossible for Global Affairs Canada to accurately track and report on the outcomes of funded projects against the goals set out in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy,” she said at a news conference in Ottawa.

The federal government unveiled the policy in 2017. Since then, Canada has been commended by international development organizations for putting women and girls at the forefront of its programs.

Ms. Hogan’s office examined whether GAC’s implementation of the policy had resulted in funding for projects that supported gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The audit also sought evidence that the projects were generating the expected outcomes.

Ms. Hogan told reporters the weaknesses highlighted in her report had already been flagged in an internal department audit in 2021.

Her report says that although GAC took steps to monitor the policy’s progress, 24 of the 26 indicators the department tracked did not measure outcomes.

The report says the Auditor-General’s office assessed 60 projects to determine whether GAC had demonstrated that it had tracked policy indicators associated with them. The audit found that the department had used only 35 of those projects to report on policy goals.

Ms. Hogan said her office looked at a project that used government funding in an attempt to make schools more welcoming for girls by building washrooms and handwashing stations. She said that while the government could say how many washrooms had been built, it couldn’t say whether or not girls’ school attendance had increased.

“It is imperative that Global Affairs Canada immediately act to improve its information management practices and reporting on results to show parliamentarians and Canadians the value of Canada’s bilateral international assistance to support women and girls in low- and middle-income countries,” she said.

International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters he accepts the findings of the report, and that improvements to project management and reporting are already under way.

He also said he has seen the results of the Feminist International Assistance Policy firsthand. He recalled a trip to Bangladesh, where he said he visited a slum and learned about how Canadian funding is supporting menstrual health education.

When asked by a reporter if he feels personally responsible for his department not knowing if the feminist policy is working, Mr. Sajjan reiterated that he has visited many projects and spoken with organizations delivering programs.

“What we need to do is be able to aggregate and get that information. … That’s what the Auditor-General has noted,” he said.

The report also said that GAC did not meet two of its three spending commitments under the policy. It fell short on funding projects that directly support the empowerment of women and girls, and on funding projects located in sub-Saharan Africa.

The audit also found that departmental spending from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 fiscal years was affected by the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“During this time, the department reallocated money to respond to needs emerging from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine; these reallocations had an impact on the department’s ability to meet spending targets,” the report says.

Mr. Sajjan said Ottawa had not reallocated money away from international aid.

“We looked at the denominator changes, because we had to put more funding into Ukraine, and also because of COVID. However, our funding into Africa also actually increased,” he said.

Garnett Genuis, the Conservative critic for international development, called the Auditor-General’s findings “very disturbing.”

“We hear the government talk all the time about gender when they talk about international development. But the Auditor-General’s report reveals today they haven’t even been bothered to measure the results of their work,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill.

Source: Ottawa can’t show how feminist assistance policy has helped improve gender equality globally, audit says

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Canadian officials knew for years existing laws didn’t curb foreign influence

2022/12/05 Leave a comment

Sigh….:

Canadian officials have known for years that the country’s existing laws did not cover foreign governments’ interference in domestic politics, documents reviewed by Global News suggest

The documents were unearthed just as Canada’s public safety minister said the government was looking at ways to beef up its defence against foreign influence in domestic affairs.

December 2020 emails at Global Affairs Canada, obtained by Global News under access to information law, state that officials were aware that some types of foreign influence in Canadian politics slipped through the cracks of existing laws. Examples in the documents include foreign investment in university research, as well as “communications activities” to promote foreign agendas.

Canadian intelligence officials and Parliament’s national security committee have cautioned for years that foreign governments – most notably China, Russia, and Iran – are actively trying to influence Canadian affairs. Some of this activity is overt, while other influence operations remain in the shadows.

The documents reviewed by Global News were part of preparations for a House of Commons speech by former Global Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne on the issue of Chinese interference in Canadian politics.

The speech, drafted for a December late debate in the House of Commons at the prompting of the opposition Conservatives, originally suggested existing laws were sufficient to curb foreign influence. But an objection from a foreign affairs bureaucrat – their name was censored in the documents – cautioned that wasn’t true.

“There are several situations not covered by the Lobbying Act and the Conflict of Interest Act, such as for instance an agent undertaking communication activity or engaging in a big disbursement of activities on behalf of a foreign government,” the email reads.

“Some of these activities would be covered if happening under election periods by the Canada Elections Act, but foreign interference is not limited to those periods.”

The official gave the example of foreign powers funding university research “in order to promote certain narratives or muzzle others.” Canada’s intelligence agencies – including the Canadians Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) – have recently dramatically increased their partnerships with university research institutions, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis.

The spy agencies were concerned that hostile foreign powers – notably China and Russia – would attempt to harvest cutting-edge pandemic research from Canada’s universities and health networks.

While officials have known for years that existing laws did not adequately cover Canada from foreign intervention, Ottawa has been reluctant to bring in new powers – such as a registry of people engaged by foreign powers to try and influence Canadian policy.

On Friday, The Canadian Press reported that Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino is considering taking that step – as close security allies like the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have done.

“The fact is that the landscape of foreign interference is becoming increasingly complex … One of the proposals that we are looking very carefully at is the creation of a foreign agent registry,” Mendicino said in an interview.

“We hope to have more to say about that in the very short term. But we are very much looking forward to going out and having a good consultation.”

Global News reported in November that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his cabinet were briefed in January 2022 that the Chinese Consulate in Toronto directed a clandestine election interference network in 2019. Intelligence sources told Global News that it included a loosely-affiliated group of Liberals and Conservatives which benefited from funding from the Chinese Communist Party to help advance Beijing’s political objectives in Canada.

Other intelligence sources told Global News the consulate disbursed $250,000 through proxies to the network, which allegedly included an Ontario MPP and at least 11 federal candidates. Intelligence sources now tell Global News that as many as 14 political staffers were involved in the network.

While the briefings did not conclude that Beijing funded campaigns directly, that is how Trudeau and political leaders have chosen to interpret the reporting in House of Commons debates.

But the internal government documents reviewed by Global News suggest that, just over a year after the 2019 campaign, Global Affairs Canada was working on a cost benefit analysis about introducing a registry of foreign agents operating in Canada.

“(We are) currently working on a note that assess the pros and cons of the U.S. and Australian legislations to inform future (Government of Canada) policy development and decision making,” the unnamed official wrote in December 2020.

Kenny Chiu, a former Conservative MP who lost his Richmond, B.C., seat in the 2021 election, proposed a similar registry ahead of the general election. The bill went nowhere – dying when the election was called – and Chiu blames his loss, in part, on his stance against Beijing’s interference.

The 2020 Global Affairs documents noted some questions about the efficacy of foreign agent registries, which have subsequently been adopted by Tory government in the U.K. Referring to the Australian example, the email noted that legal scholars have called into question that country’s foreign agent transparency regime on human rights concerns.

That debate has yet to begin in Canada, but if Mendicino’s comments Friday are to be believed, it’s about to.Beijing has denied any attempt to meddle in Canada’s affairs – a claim belied by Parliament’s national security committee and the country’s intelligence agencies.

Source: Canadian officials knew for years existing laws didn’t curb foreign influence

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Lisée – Et maintenant: l’endoctrinement [on federal antiracism training guide]

2021/04/19 Leave a comment

Jean-François Lisée picks up on Brian Lilley’s critique (LILLEY: Feds’ anti-racism training deals with political agendas, nothing else), albeit in a more sophisticated mannner:

Les fonctionnaires fédéraux ont-ils droit à la liberté de conscience ? Pour peu qu’ils soient respectueux des normes et des lois et de leurs collègues de travail, ont-ils droit à leurs propres opinions sur l’histoire de leur pays et sur l’état des relations raciales ? La réponse est désormais non. Il existe une doctrine d’État que les fonctionnaires doivent apprendre et internaliser, quelles que soient leurs expériences de vie ou leurs visions du monde. Un document fédéral officiel obtenu par le Toronto Sun grâce à la Loi sur l’accès à l’information est à la fois fascinant et scandaleux. Il s’agit du Parcours d’apprentissage dans le cadre de la lutte contre le racisme. La chose irait de soi si l’apprentissage en question portait sur les pratiques discriminatoires à éviter, les bienfaits des politiques d’accès à l’égalité, les normes, les recours et les sanctions. Mais le document s’attaque aux opinions qu’on peut avoir — et qu’on ne doit pas avoir — sur les causes, l’histoire et la définition du racisme. Les participants sont appelés à « apprendre, [à] désapprendre et [à] réapprendre ».

Par exemple, peut-être avez-vous la conviction que le Canada fut fondé sur une volonté de créer un pays distinct de l’expérience états-unienne, mettant en équilibre les intérêts de plusieurs anciennes colonies, dont le Québec francophone, et voulant maintenir un lien fort avec la couronne britannique ? Peut-être pensiez-vous que, parmi les graves imperfections du pays, il y eut la mauvaise part faite aux Autochtones et des pratiques répréhensibles envers des minorités de couleur ?

Si vous jugiez que, contrairement à l’impact structurel de l’esclavage dans l’histoire états-unienne, ces événements malheureux ne constituaient pas l’essence même de l’existence du Canada, l’État canadien vous rabroue officiellement. Vous êtes porteurs d’un « mythe » et de « déformation des faits historiques » qu’il faut désapprendre. La réalité, présentée comme un « fait » qui n’est pas ouvert au débat, est que le racisme est au cœur de l’expérience canadienne, un de ses fondements. L’existence même du Canada est une agression.

Trudeauiste bon teint, peut-être oserez-vous faire valoir que le multiculturalisme est une politique officielle depuis un demi-siècle et que le Canada est en passe de s’affranchir de son passé honteux ? Vous avez tort. Je cite : « Chaque institution était et est toujours utilisée pour prouver que la race existe et pour promouvoir l’idée que la race blanche est au sommet de la hiérarchie des races et que toutes les autres lui sont inférieures. » Chaque institution était et est toujours, en 2021, raciste. Et si vous tiquiez devant le concept de racisme systémique, cramponnez-vous, car la doctrine officielle a franchi un nouveau cap. Le document décrit ainsi la situation actuelle du racisme canadien : « Un groupe a le pouvoir de pratiquer une discrimination systématique au moyen des politiques et pratiques institutionnelles. » Oui, on est passés de systémique à systématique.

La doctrine vous rabroue doublement si vous osez procéder à des comparaisons avec les États-Unis sur le nombre des victimes ou sur l’intensité du dommage causé. Le document est explicite : « Le racisme est tout aussi grave au Canada. » Fin de la discussion. C’est un dogme.

Il y est aussi question d’esclavage, et le document prend bien soin d’indiquer que ce fléau fut répandu au Canada, y compris en Nouvelle-France, ce qui est vrai. Les fonctionnaires qui l’ignoraient peut-être sont aussi informés que les Autochtones furent victimes de l’esclavage. Mais le document omet de signaler que les nations autochtones pratiquaient l’esclavage entre elles avant l’arrivée des Européens, et après, et qu’elles ont participé à la traite des Noirs sur le continent. Je souhaite bonne chance au fonctionnaire qui oserait soulever ce fait historique lors d’une formation.

Puisque le racisme est défini étroitement, comme l’oppression d’une race par une autre, et jamais d’une ethnie par une autre, il n’est nulle part question du fait que les Britanniques, des Blancs, ont voulu déporter d’autres Blancs, des Acadiens, ou que les Canadiens français furent pendant deux siècles victimes de discrimination. Le colonialisme est un élément fondateur du pays (c’est incontestable), mais pas la Conquête (c’est loufoque). Notons que l’antisémitisme est aussi passé sous silence, un angle mort problématique dans la culture woke.

On y parle évidemment du privilège blanc, qui peut être personnel, institutionnel ou structurel, intentionnel ou non. Tous les fonctionnaires blancs doivent donc apprendre qu’ils sont, par défaut, coupables de racisme. C’est dans leur nature. Le caractère univoque et culpabilisateur de la formation est à couper le souffle.

Prenons un instant pour réfléchir à l’existence même de ce document officiel.

Nous avions entendu Justin Trudeau déclarer à plusieurs reprises qu’il avait, lui, la conviction que toutes les institutions canadiennes étaient coupables de racisme systémique. Il est rare que le premier ministre d’un pays accable ainsi la totalité des institutions qu’il a pour charge de diriger, de représenter et, au besoin, de réformer.

Mais bon, c’était son avis personnel. Que ces notions soient débattues dans les universités, dans les panels, à la radio ou dans les journaux est une chose. Mais il ne s’agit plus désormais d’opinions discutables parmi d’autres. Les fonctionnaires fédéraux sont désormais contraints de participer à des formations où on leur dit que cette vision du monde est la bonne, que c’est la ligne juste, et que s’ils pensent autrement, ils doivent désapprendre, pour mieux apprendre. Il s’agit ni plus ni moins que d’endoctrinement.

On voudrait savoir qui a décidé que la théorie critique de la race était devenue doctrine d’État ? À quel moment et dans quel forum ? Qui a acquiescé à cela ? Et surtout, comment infirmer cette décision absurde qui est une atteinte frontale à la liberté de conscience ?

Source: Et maintenant: l’endoctrinement

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

LILLEY: Feds’ anti-racism training deals with political agendas, nothing else

2021/04/09 Leave a comment

While not a great fan of Lilley’s commentary, I do give him credit for bringing this GAC/Foreign Service Institute guide to public attention.

While his criticism is overstated, some of the guide is overly simplistic, woke or splitting hairs (e.g., that reverse racism against white people doesn’t exist because of power dynamics, racism in Canada is the same as USA while there are both commonalities and differences) and doesn’t acknowledge some of the progress, albeit imperfect, that has taken place over the last few generations. Government training material should be more balanced in its treatment:

Wearing blackface is an act of white supremacy but so is seeking to be objective. These are some of the things you will learn if you happen to work for the federal government and are taking their latest anti-racism course.

Documents obtained under access to information show a real stretch on the definition of racism.

Source: LILLEY: Feds’ anti-racism training deals with political agendas, nothing else

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,