ICYMI – Jamie Sarkonak: The CRTC’s top-down diversity mandate comes for Big Streaming ICYMI

2025/12/03 2 Comments

While some like Sarkonak find this ill-thought, there is a history behind these initiatives as many government programs overly favoured previous beneficiaries or incumbents rather than ensuring better representation. And having good or better data is a basic (the Employment Equity Act relative success is arguably largely based on public diversity reporting:

…In addition, the Broadcasting Act now states that the broadcasting system should support programming created by and for non-white communities. While it didn’t outright state that quotas and demographic tracking were now required, that’s increasingly how it’s being interpreted.

In its decision to mandate the collection of diversity statistics, the CRTC notes that some television and radio broadcasters are currently required to include statistics on the presence of women in “key production roles” and track spending on content by Indigenous and official language minority producers.

It considers those data collection initiatives a success, and thus, “the Commission is of the view that the report lends itself well to be expanded to gather information on all equity-deserving groups (specifically, racialized people, people with disabilities and individuals who identify as 2SLGBTQI+, in addition to women).”

Big online streamers operating in Canada under this new regime will have to submit these diversity statistics as part of this. The current lack of data, the CRTC complained, “results in a partial picture of production spending and representation of equity-deserving groups in the production sector.” That information is important because it helps to “monitor compliance and trends and to ensure policy goals are met, especially when it comes to representation of equity-deserving groups.”

We aren’t at the point where the CRTC is ordering Netflix, HBO and Paramount+ to spend a minimum proportion of their production budgets on “diverse” shows and production teams, but we’re awfully close. In 2022, the CRTC ordered the CBC to do just that with its budget for commissioned TV and documentary programs. This year, the English side of CBC was required to dedicate 30 per cent of spending in that category to “diverse” production teams.

Last year, the CRTC also announced that it would be taking a five per cent cut from online streamers to redistribute to industry groups in Canada whose missions include the advancement of DEI in broadcasting. And in July, the CRTC tweaked its funding formula for online news to incentivize coverage of “diverse” communities….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: The CRTC’s top-down diversity mandate comes for Big Streaming

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Jamie Sarkonak: Carney’s budget is more subtle on wokeness, but the agenda is still strong

2025/11/06 Leave a comment

Noting the change but discounting the extent:

Tuesday’s budget wasn’t like those of the high Trudeau years, encrusted with identity politics at every turn. But the spirit of the old regime lives on under Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has opted for a deficit of $78.3 billion along with the continuation of social justice programs and diversity mandates.

This year, one-time “investments” are numerous. The federal anti-racism secretariat — the entity that spurred a government-wide clampdown on forced diversity and hiring quotas in Ottawa in 2021, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement — is getting $2 million in 2025-26, and nothing else after that. The Canadian Heritage program for DEI in sport is getting $8 million in 2025-26, and, again, nothing afterwards.

Even better, the Liberals are spending $28 million over the next two years on Canadian Heritage’s Digital Citizen Initiative, which has been around for years now. It could arguably be called a propaganda program, as it essentially involves funding government-aligned influencers to dispel “disinformation” and researchers to track “anti-Liberal” media, among other things. This budget claims that the funding tap will shut off in 2027 … but we’ll see about that.

The National Film Board, which restricts non-Indigenous individuals from using archive footage for commercial purposes, is getting a $4 million bonus next year. Federal museums, which have been slammed with diversity mandates in the Liberal era, will get $12 million.

Identity-based business funding is back, as well. The federal women’s entrepreneurship program is supposed to get $39 million next year, with nothing to come after. Black entrepreneurs, meanwhile, were told in September that they were getting another $189 million over the next five years for race-based business funding (this wasn’t written into the budget documents, however).

How many of these programs will actually end in a year or two, it’s hard to say. It’s easy for the government change its mind next budget season — better, even, because doing this helps keep the projected deficit lower….

Perhaps most disappointing of all is the continued existence of Women and Gender Equality Canada, which will be getting $500 million over the years 2026 to 2030. The department exists to funnel government money to Liberal-aligned social justice organizations and create new crises relating to menstruation, among other things, and really doesn’t have a point in an age where gender equality has largely been achieved.

Regardless of any spending cuts, the core philosophy of the Liberal government has remained the same since 2015: spend on the mosaic model of culture; prioritize supports on the basis of identity and privilege. Under Carney, it’s no different.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Carney’s budget is more subtle on wokeness, but the agenda is still strong

Filed under DEI, gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Jamie Sarkonak: Liberal diversity mandates must end if we’re to solve the judge shortage

2025/11/03 2 Comments

Not sure if there is real evidence for the assertion “focus on diversity necessarily comes at the expense of excellence” and citing one example rather than a broader sample does not cut it. The shortages assertion may or may not be true, as the government has a record in many areas of not meeting targets and levels:

…This tends to involve standard-bending because the pool of bench-eligible senior lawyers is going to be more white and more male than the country as a whole. The senior tiers of any profession reflect the demographics of students in professional schools 40 years ago, not today. While excellent candidates can be found from all walks of life, the Liberal focus on diversity necessarily comes at the expense of excellence. And because the Liberals are obsessed with maintaining an acceptable ratio of white male to “diverse” appointees, we can infer that they’d rather leave some seats empty until a correct number of diverse judges can be put forward at the same time. Shortages ensue….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Liberal diversity mandates must end if we’re to solve the judge shortage

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Jamie Sarkonak: Canada doesn’t owe the world’s children a passport

2025/10/14 Leave a comment

More support for curbing birthright citizenship:

Anyone in the world can come to Canada, have a baby, and secure that child a lifetime of Canadian benefits along with a family link to this country for later chain migration. They don’t have to speak English or French; they don’t have to share our taboos against incest and rape; they don’t need to contribute anything to Canadian society. There are no guardrails.

But on Tuesday, we got a glimpse of how good things could be when Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner proposed a simple change to the law that would prevent citizenship from being granted to children born in Canada to non-citizens — unless at least one parent has permanent residency.

This would close Canada’s widest and most longstanding chain migration entry point without being too harsh on the foreign nationals who have established a connection to the country (though we do need higher standards for PR, too). It’s about as fair as you can get. Alas, Rempel Garner’s amendment was promptly shot down by the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals, who believe in the extreme approach of handing passports out like candy at a parade.

The rest of the world has noticed our complete lack of boundaries and is taking advantage of it. Non-resident births in 2021-22 doubled to 5,698 from the previous year’s 2,245. It’s a cottage industry in B.C., and in one study of 102 birth tourists at a Calgary hospital, the most popular source country was Nigeria, but parents also came from the Middle East, India and Mexico. Keep in mind that these are just the non-residents — there are plenty of other temporary residents giving birth here, but we don’t seem to be keeping track.

Even if these children grow up and never set foot in Canada again, they’ll be entitled to all the benefits of citizenship. They’ll be able to run for office, vote, and obtain consular services if unrest engulfs whatever country their family has chosen to raise them in. If they ever join a terror organization like ISIS, Canadian officials will be expected to retrieve them.

Not to mention the privilege of low domestic tuition, a right to public health care, the unfettered ability to re-enter the country, the ability to claim all kinds of social benefits, the absolute impossibility of deportation should they ever commit a heinous crime, and the guarantee that their children will be eligible for Canadian citizenship, too — and their children, if the Liberals pass Bill C-3, which has now cleared committee.

It’s not just the developing world’s rich who are using this loophole. It’s an avenue that’s open to any economic migrant: from “students” of strip-mall colleges, to temporary workers, to bogus asylum seekers. Having a child in Canada bolsters their applications to remain, particularly if they ever face deportation….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Canada doesn’t owe the world’s children a passport

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Jamie Sarkonak: He mildly questioned DEI. His law school calls that ‘misconduct’

2025/06/18 Leave a comment

Of note. May not have been from a neutral position but nevertheless a cautionary tale. Court case to watch:

…Tim Haggstrom’s crime? Writing an open letter to his fellow students, from a neutral position, to foster dialogue and attempt to inject reason into the debate. His punishment? A campaign by other students to sabotage his career, culminating in an official finding of misconduct by a spineless university that appears to have forgotten its role in protecting free expression on campus.

That campaign, at least, didn’t work. Now a lawyer (and the national director of the Runnymede Society, whose local chapter events I often attend) Haggstrom, via his legal team at civil liberties charity Freedoms Advocate, is asking the Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench to have the misconduct ruling thrown out — along with the university policies that work to deny procedural fairness to those who don’t emphatically agree with diversity, equity and inclusion.

For the university’s own sake, Haggstrom better win.

He alleges unfair, Charter-infringing treatment in his court filings, and he’s got a strong argument. At the time Haggstrom expressed the need for discussion over affirmative action at the law school, the University of Saskatchewan had already adopted an identity-based worldview, aimed at elevating certain groups in the university.

The institution had, since 2020, a diversity, equity and inclusion policy that implored the entire campus to uphold DEI values, cementing identity-based thinking — and with it, the idea that procedures are only fair when they result in equal outcomes between groups — into campus culture. That year, the university president committed himself to the “dismantling of institutional structures, policies and processes that contribute to inequalities faced by marginalized groups.”

In 2021, the university signed a memorandum of understanding with the student union, committing to deliver anti-oppression and anti-racism training to staff, which was being rolled out by the next year. That initiative was led by anti-racist scholar Verna St. Denis, who has openly called for biasing university education to favour her own progressive, deeply racial worldview. St. Denis also contributed to the university’s Indigenous strategy, also released in 2021, which planned for institution-wide decolonial change.

Further, according to the originating application filed in court by Haggstrom, the university had made training materials available on the topic of “power and privilege.” The materials are no longer on the university website, but were archived online. They teach a hierarchical understanding of race (specifically, that white people have better access to education and success); they characterize meritocracy as a feature of “settler mindsets”; they state that internalized colonialism causes oppressed people to commit sexual assault; they instruct readers to “refute colonialism” (that is, the very basis of our nation) to assist in making Canada “the friendly, open, welcoming country it espouses to be.” They remark that anti-oppressive education “ought to be uncomfortable as white students begin to unlearn what they have been taught through their previous learning experiences.”

The course ends on a question: “As an individual how can you decolonize yourself and what can you do with your power and privilege to help in the betterment of Canada?”…

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: He mildly questioned DEI. His law school calls that ‘misconduct’

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Jamie Sarkonak: Federal bureaucrat-activists strike again with ‘Understanding Islamophobia’ guide

2025/03/11 Leave a comment

Unfortunate but typical framing by the NP.

It is valid for the federal government to prepare such a primer, just as it was valid for the government to prepare its Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

One of the omission in these types of documents is that they tend to discount, arguably overly so, the extremist elements within communities and their impact on the social fabric. Given the nature of some of the Gaza demonstrations and rhetoric, the primer should be more nuanced and note the presence of extremists (not unique to Muslims).

Unfortunately, I do not have the time to do a comparative analysis, side-by-side of the Islamophobia and Antisemitism primers but hopefully some others will do so (would make great undergrad essay!):

…It concludes by asking that more Canadians do more to assist the good image of Islam in Canada: audit workplaces and engage in “anti-racist leadership”; collect data on the religion of one’s employees; launch awareness campaigns for religious rights; provide workplace training; include Islam as an identity promoted within diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

The report altogether sends the message that any cool sentiment towards Islam, or at least lack of warmth, is a problem that needs to be fixed, just like anti-Muslim violence. But, it’s not the government’s job to ensure that a satisfactory number of people like any certain religion. This is Canada. While discrimination is wrong, and hate-motivated violence should be fully prosecuted by the law, individuals are allowed to have opinions, negative or positive, about religious groups.

It also maligns non-Muslim Canadians as a collective for the wrongdoing of individuals, which, hypocritically, is exactly what it asks Canadians not to do of Islam.

No other religious group gets this level of treatment from government, with dedicated federal appointees, equity initiatives, and heaps of funding for community groups and phobia-dispelling initiatives: not Sikhism, or Judaism, or Hinduism. Not even Christianity, even though it’s engrained into Canadian society as a result of history and forms the moral foundation of the West. Indeed, anyone with eyes knows that Christianity is frequently bashed in the public sphere for all sorts of reasons.

This report is an attempt at progress, but it’s anything but. It’s up to the public to think what it thinks, it’s up to employers to treat employees of all religions fairly, and it’s up to the government (and its courts) to punish violent, hateful criminal activity.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Federal bureaucrat-activists strike again with ‘Understanding Islamophobia’ guide, The Canadian Guide to Understanding and Combatting Islamophobia

The Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, however, did note:

….But there was a shadow over the Forum that did not go unnoticed in the impromptu discussions taking place. The Prime Minister said he is a Zionist and we cannot normalize treating Zionism as a pejorative term. However, shortly before the Forum was held, the Canadian Guide to Understanding and Combatting Islamophobia was released by the Federal government. 

The Guide was led by the Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, Almira Elghawaby. Much of it is unproblematic. But it devotes a section to anti-Palestinian racism (APR) noting that, in Canada, the understanding of APR is growing, with initiatives like the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association’s 2022 framework. It also states that “some school boards have also developed or are in the process of developing their own definitions of anti-Palestinian racism to address this issue and its harmful effects.” 

These passages are footnoted to include, among other things, the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association’s report that defines APR in a way that makes all Zionists racists. For example, it claims that those who “fail to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine” are racists. We also know that there is a call for filmmakers on Instagram respecting a film project on anti-Palestinian racism. It appears to be sponsored by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, the authors of the troubling definition of APR discussed above and funded by the Government of Canada (Employment and Social Development Canada).

A Call for Consistent Policies

No one should condone or permit discrimination against Palestinians because they are Palestinian, against Arabs because they are Arabs, or against Muslims because they are Muslim. Nor should anyone discriminate against those who wish to express “pro-Palestinian” views or criticize Israel in the same way that other countries are subjected to criticism. The IHRA definition of antisemitism and its illustrations make that clear. 

However, the federal government cannot have it both ways. Issuing a guide that incorporates by reference a definition of APR that demonizes all Zionists and Israelis is incompatible with what the Prime Minister told those assembled at the Forum, and incompatible with true Canadian values. If the Canadian government truly wishes to show its commitment to combatting antisemitism, it should immediately withdraw the objectionable passages of the Guide to Combatting Islamophobia and reconfirm its commitment that Zionists and Israeli-Canadians will not be demonized for their beliefs.

Source: The National Forum on Antisemitism and Mixed Messages

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Jamie Sarkonak: P.E.I.’s Dennis King was the only premier with the guts to tackle immigration

2025/02/27 Leave a comment

Parallels with the federal reversals:

…Once a province with a stable population, P.E.I.’s growth has reached a crescendo in recent years. From 2000 to 2010, total residents ranged from 136,000 to roughly 140,000. From 2010 to 2020, that figure rose to 159,000. Since 2020, it reached a whopping 179,000.

In other words, it once took a whole decade for the province to gain 4,000 people. Now, it takes five years to gain 20,000 people.

The consequences? Crowding in virtually every system. Housing is stretched to its limit, with vacancy rates in the province ranging from two to 0.1 per cent, depending on the quarter, in 2023 and 2024 (for comparison, 2012 vacancy rates hovered at about five per cent).

Health care, meanwhile, hasn’t fared much better. One-fifth of Islanders were without a doctor in 2024 and wait times are long. While P.E.I. has attempted to tackle backlogs by all sorts of means — it’s worked with the telehealth platform Maple to increase access to primary care, for example — capacity remains slim. In 2023, the province’s health minister pinned much of the blame on impossible-to-keep-up-with population growth.

While most immigration is within the federal government’s sphere of control, the provinces can alter the number of immigrants coming in through the provincial nominee program (subject to federal limits), and this is where King found an opportunity to make cuts.

He would have known that outrage would follow when he announced the cuts — and indeed, it did. A loud contingent of foreign workers and students, who believed the provincial nominee program was their ticket to permanent Canadian residency, organized a protest that lasted for months.

They marched and chanted. They set up encampments. They held on-and-off hunger strikes. They spoke to the legislature. They found support among pro-immigration non-profits and in the media — CBC’s coverage naturally focused on the plight of the protesters and the loyalty of their allies rather than their critics, creating an illusion of popularity (online forums, like Reddit, generally featured far more contempt for the protesters than sympathy)….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: P.E.I.’s Dennis King was the only premier with the guts to tackle immigration

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Jamie Sarkonak: Good riddance to all the Liberal bills that Trudeau just culled

2025/01/08 Leave a comment

…Also dead is that bill that would have made thousands of people around the world eligible for Canadian citizenship.

Bill C-71, if you remember, would give the children of Canadians born abroad citizenship through descent, as long as the parents can establish a “substantial connection” to Canada. The guardrail wouldn’t be a secure one, since some judges don’t believe that there are any citizens who lack a connection to the country.

The bill’s proponents marketed it as a remedy to a rare problem that sometimes afflicts Canadian families who live abroad, such as military families. However, in trying to solve their problems, the bill would have made it much easier for citizenship to be obtained by the grandchildren of birth tourists (people who who travel to Canada to give birth, which secures Canadian citizenship for their child)…

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Good riddance to all the Liberal bills that Trudeau just culled

Filed under C-71, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Jamie Sarkonak: Immigration needs to work for Canadians, not rule-breakers from abroad

2025/01/06 Leave a comment

Two minds on this decision. On the one hand, the judge was emphasizing the welfare of children, on the other hand, clearly fraudulent refugee case. And will the family be actually deported once the school year is over?

…Ministers have the power to step in and block deportations — I have no problem with that — but the government shouldn’t be obligated to carry out lengthy procedures designed to give those here illegally every shot at staying. In a country with supposedly fixed borders and social supports, it shouldn’t take this much state capacity to remove those who aren’t cleared to be here.

On the criminal front, it’s just as bad. Due to court precedent, Canadian judges are obligated to consider “immigration consequences” when sentencing non-citizen offenders. In some cases, it results in a sentence discount: nightclub gropers and drunken burglars from abroad have received lighter sentences under this rule to give them a greater shot at remaining in Canada.

There are plenty more legitimate refugees, and otherwise law-abiding non-citizen newcomers who are eager to adapt to Canadian life and get on the path to citizenship. Let state resources go to supporting them, and not people who abuse our rules to harm others and extend their already illegal stays.

Canadians deserve a system that works for them, not outsiders. Let that be a change that graces us in 2025.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Immigration needs to work for Canadians, not rule-breakers from abroad

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Jamie Sarkonak: Expect more injustice from the Liberals’ forthcoming Black Justice Strategy

2024/07/20 Leave a comment

Sarkonak continues her focus on the excesses of some advisory panels in recommendations that cross the line between recognizing different experiences and issues and developing separate bodies or processes to accommodate them:

…The report amounts to a socialist manifesto advancing cliché policy ideas that were all the rage during the Summer of George Floyd. Which is probably what the Liberals hoped to get out of the process: some kind of document that allows them to run the “experts said” defence when they ultimately propose to vandalize the Criminal Code.

Indeed, Canadians are overwhelmingly in favour of colourblind (rather than colour-conscious) policy at a rate of 70 to 30. When it comes to drugs and crime, a 2023 Leger survey found that nearly 80 per cent believe that too many violent offenders are being given bail, and about the same amount believe that the justice system is too lenient on criminals. About 70 per cent wanted more policing and tougher laws on drugs.

Beyond being plain offensive to the general public’s sense of justice, the ideas currently being weighed in Minister Arif Virani’s office likely miss some number of their target audience, too. One prominent voice, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, is one example in the “no” camp.

“Black Canadians, like all Canadians, deserve a justice system focused on community safety,” he wrote last week on X.

“If the policies contained in the so-called ‘Black Justice Strategy’ report are adopted, there will surely be more crime, drugs and disorder in our communities. There will also be more victims of crime, and black Canadians will be affected along with the rest of the country.”

If the final Black Justice Strategy looks anything like what handpicked experts envision, it will be painfully out of touch. It will cost. It will reek of unfairness, diverting even more public resources to a fraction of Canadians to the detriment of everyone else. And it will be genuinely harmful by hamstringing the state’s ability to separate bad actors from the law-abiding public — by imprisonment or deportation.

Perhaps worst of all, it will promote the corrosive conception of Canada as a confederacy of racial groups rather than a unified state for Canadian citizens.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Expect more injustice from the Liberals’ forthcoming Black Justice Strategy

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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