Kelly McParland: Of the long list of Liberal blunders, immigration takes the cake

2024/11/20 Leave a comment

Reasonable assessment:

Canada stands out amid the fray, however. For decades, Canadians expressed a pride approaching smugness in the high levels of support for ever-rising immigration quotas and the civility of the welcome offered newcomers. There was widespread agreement that immigration brought with it growth, energy, new ideas, broad experience and an array of benefits in food, music, style, the arts and other cultural attractions.

No more. The Trudeau government now sees electoral advantage  — or more likely necessity — in hot-footing it to the front of the deportation parade, as if it weren’t responsible for the policies that produced the parade in the first place. In a sharp reversal of previous positions,  Immigration Minister Marc Miller proclaimed last week in Vancouver that whatever it was Ottawa thought its border policies were achieving was no longer operative.

“It’s clear that the age of unlimited supply of cheap foreign labour is over, and I think that is a good thing,” he announced.

“Bringing the numbers down, I think, is very important to making sure that we aren’t simply chasing short-term gain for a lot of long-term pain.”

Short-term gain is precisely what the Liberal approach to immigration has been all about. Annual admissions have almost doubled since 2015. The government saw it as a way to secure reliable votes from grateful newcomers, provide abundant low-wage labour, fill schools with foreign students paying high tuitions, and support Liberals’ eagerness to portray themselves as caring, tolerant and good-hearted.

Instead, the rise in population is blamed for a housing crisis, college campuses have become puppy mills for overcharged students, tens of thousands of newcomers have seen their hopes of a permanent new life in Canada dashed, and Canada’s international reputation has been badly sullied. The number of students seeking asylum has grown from about 1,800 in 2018 to more than 12,500 in 2023. In the first nine months of this year, there had already been almost 14,000 requests. More than 1.2 million people granted temporary residency are being told to leave by next year in what would be an unprecedented outflow. The backlog in refugee claims has reached 260,000, creating a lineup so lengthy it allows claimants to spend additional years in the country awaiting their hearing.

A big problem with well-meaning, but ill-considered, social programs is that they bring the aim itself into disrepute when they go wrong. Eight years ago, when Justin Trudeau was keen on differentiating his views from a bellicose new U.S. president named Trump, he fired off a message obviously intended to reflect Canada’s superior righteousness.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he tweeted.

The day after Trump was voted back into the White House this month, all that had changed.

“Canadians quite rightly believe that it needs to be a decision of Canada and Canadians who comes to our country and who doesn’t,” asserted Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“That is something that’s really important, it’s fundamental.”

Source: Kelly McParland: Of the long list of Liberal blunders, immigration takes the cake

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McParland: Renaming Ryerson University to appease the delicate is probably harmless, if pointless

2021/08/31 Leave a comment

Valid critique of single-minded blinkers:

The only reason I knew anything about Egerton Ryerson, before he ran afoul of the forces of statue reclamation, was because, for a brief period, I attended the Toronto school that took his name.

That was a long time ago. Ryerson was a mere polytechincal institute at the time and no one cared much who it was named after. Given I was to spend time there, I checked out the man whose name was on the building. Turned out he was a key figure in the staid, grey, ultra-respectable clique that ran the Toronto in the early and middle decades of the 19th century. Most of them were rigid, unbending figures, steeped in their self-regard, but Ryerson was an education maven: arguing that education should be mandatory, schools should be free, teachers should be professionally trained, textbooks should include Canadian authors, schools should be run independently and freed of the monopolistic hands of the priests. For that he won wide plaudits and remained a respected and admired figure well into the current century, until history was suddenly revised and he became a reviled character accused of plotting to demean and degrade Canada’s Indigenous people.

His sin was that, approached for advice on a means of educating Aboriginal children, he advocated for teaching in English in boarding schools away from families. While he could hardly be blamed for the horror show the system later became, his presence at the birth of the concept has seen him seized on by revisionist extremists intent on denouncing the dead for failing to adopt 21st century processes in a 19th century world.

The old-timey Ryerson Polytechnical Institute I attended has since grown considerably, sprawling over a network of streets and byways all over central Toronto and proudly re-branding itself as a fully-fledged university. Now it is to have a new name, because any association with Egerton Ryerson is a wholly unsatisfactory state of affairs for the ultra-woke, easily offended young people who make up the student body or the timid functionaries who populate the administration.

The decision was announced Thursday after approval by the university’s board of governors, based on the recommendations of a report commissioned last November. In addition to designating Ryerson an unperson, the board agreed the university “will not reinstall, restore or replace” a statue that had been pulled down and disfigured, and will issue “an open call for proposals for the rehoming of the remaining pieces … to promote educational initiatives.” Anyone looking for an extra kneecap or a spare left hand as a conversation piece or garden ornament should presumably apply at the bursar’s office.

Ceremonies to promote “healing and closure” will be held at the spot the statue once occupied. Board members agreed something will also have to be done about “Eggy,” a school mascot that will obviously no longer do unless the faculty redirects its interests towards the reproductive habits of chickens.

If a new name makes the delicate daisies at Ryerson happy it seems kind of harmless. And maybe it’s just as well. Parts of the university border on Dundas Street, a main thoroughfare christened after another long-dead figure who got himself mixed up with the wrong side of history. Since the city had already decided to rename the offending stretches of pavement, the university was going to have to order up new letterhead anyway, so why not go for the full magillah? Next on the list could be Yonge St., which also skirts the campus and honours a figure far more objectionable than either Dundas or Ryerson, but who has somehow escaped the roving hordes of Puritans now dictating the acceptable limits of nomenclature to a crushed and cowering city. By this time next year whole swaths of the city core could find itself operating under new identities, confusing the tourists and playing havoc with street maps.

It’s possible trouble still lies ahead, however. Among findings in the task force report was a potentially troubling recommendation that some recognition of Ryerson’s existence be allowed to continue. Specifically, “the establishment of a physical and interactive display that provides comprehensive and accessible information about the legacy of Egerton Ryerson and the period in which he was commemorated by the university,” and  “the creation of a website that disseminates the Task Force’s historical research findings about Egerton Ryerson’s life and legacy.”

Given that the man was hardly the ogre imagined by his statue-bashing accusers, and bears much credit for the early development of an advanced education system in what was then a remote and underpopulated province, it’s possible an honest assessment of his life won’t be as dark and discreditable as today’s student body obviously hopes.

What happens then? Will they tear down the display and banish the web site? Probably. Truth can never be allowed to spoil the prejudices of historical ignorance. Especially at an institution of higher education.

Source: https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-renaming-ryerson-university-to-appease-the-delicate-is-probably-harmless-if-pointless/wcm/9cdcaa08-96aa-44ea-b856-6e13345e8373

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Kelly McParland: Why reactionary populism will fizzle in Canada

2019/08/14 Leave a comment

Tend to agree:

Populism is getting a bad rap in Canada, unjustifiably so.

According to my unaffiliated and wholly non-partisan online dictionary, populism is defined as “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.” That’s pretty much the whole world, outside a few billionaires, right?

Appealing to ordinary people is what most major political parties claim to do. The least populist parties are the ones on the extreme left or right that seek to spread blinkered minority views that are too often rooted in bitterness, envy, anger, ignorance or ideology run wild. The only people who think this is ordinary are the extremists themselves.

Donald Trump is not a populist, he’s an appallingly shallow, ignorant and narcissistic loudmouth who has struck a chord with Americans who are, for the most part, decent people, but feel they’ve been forgotten by Washington’s craven and self-serving establishment. They have good reason for feeling that way, though supporting Trump is not the solution.

There is little chance of Canada’s federal government being seized by the same sort of ugliness. There are several reasons for this, chief among them that Canadians are vastly different from Americans, less fixated on the outer reaches of individualism, less prone to absolutism and more inclined to compromise and a culture of reformative fudging.

Nonetheless, someone in Ottawa evidently felt the need to invite a perceived expert on the issue to address a task force of senior bureaucrats on “diversity and inclusivity,” which under the Trudeau government has become an obsession all its own. The expert, Tim Dixon, is a “a social movement builder” who co-founded More in Common, a non-profit with operations in a number of European countries that seeks to “build communities and societies that are stronger, more united and more resilient to the increasing threats of polarization and social division.” He is also co-founder of Purpose Europe, “a home for building movements that harness technology to engage large numbers of people and help make progress on major global problems.” Before setting out to remake the world he was a speechwriter for Australian politicians.

If you survey the faces of the various Purpose teams on their websites, you’d have a hard time finding a better-scrubbed, diverse group of young, motivated, good-intentioners anywhere. More in Common has only existed since 2017 but has already printed numerous publications, mostly focused on the U.S. and Europe, dealing with the strains linked to immigration and refugees.

There is no question such strains exist. The Brexit mess in the U.K. is tied directly to hostility towards immigration rules. Over the weekend The New York Times published a lengthy examination of how Sweden’s legacy of tolerance has been undermined by a cross-border digital web of dark impulses exploited by a local party founded on Nazi principles. Italy’s latest government crisis could see the prime ministership go to Matteo Salvini, a party leader with very Trumpian views who has been linked in a series of recent reports to illicit funding from Russia. In the U.S., the political divide has grown so wide and deep there is serious doubt the Democratic party can find a nominee free enough from plans for radical social and economic upheaval to stand a chance against Trump.

Such developments offer good reason for Canadians to look beyond their borders and wonder what perverse political virus has seized the world. But there still is not much cause for serious concern that it might take hold here. For all the Trudeau Liberals’ attempts to portray Conservative leader Andrew Scheer as a bigot-in-training, the man’s biggest flaw may be that he’s just too much an everyday Canadian to inspire excitement among a population that takes its politics in small doses, and only when necessary. The closest Canada comes to a party of intolerance is the People’s Party of Maxime Bernier, who broke away from Scheer’s Tories out of pique at having been rejected as leader and precisely because necks among the Scheer Conservatives aren’t nearly red enough for his liking. Bernier is pledging to significantly reduce immigration to Canada, but fears he might steal votes on the right have proved unfounded: the party barely registers in polls and Bernier has been reduced to recruiting from among disaffected candidates who were either rejected by the Tories or couldn’t drum up much interest anywhere else.

In contrast to Bernier’s pledge to cap immigration at minimal levels, the other parties all remain gangbusters for increased numbers, mainly because Canada needs bright, educated and hard-working people to feed the workforce and the gaps that remain in important industries. The biggest difference between Tory thinking and Liberal thinking relates to the qualifications of would-be migrants, how much time they spend in Canada and how many family members should be allowed in without much prospect they’ll be able to contribute to the benefits they’ll consume.

The “immigration crisis” most often referred to in headlines refers to the sudden flood of arrivals across an illegal crossing in Quebec, which upset Canadians because they thought it was unfair, and because many felt Trudeau brought it on himself via a typically vainglorious tweet offering open arms at a time the world was beset by crises involving millions of people displaced by war and poverty. Conservatives saw arrivals as largely opportunistic and illegal, Liberals wanted to deny there was a crisis. Since the numbers have eased, the “crisis” talk has faded.

The bottom line is that there’s not much evidence Canada is in danger of producing the sort of deep-seated antipathy that feeds the forces of rancour on the left and right. If anything, it seems more likely the abhorrence with which Trump is widely viewed will act as a barrier to any serious spread of the virus that has troubled Europe and the U.S. It’s nice that bureaucrats would feel the need to familiarize themselves with the challenges confronting their colleagues in other countries, but it’s unlikely More in Common will need to mobilize its forces to establish a branch plant in Canada just yet.

Source: Kelly McParland: Why reactionary populism will fizzle in Canada

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Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s first senate appointees are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint

2016/03/24 Leave a comment

Valid points by McParland but one can have general values and experience ‘alignment’ while also having a measure of independence. And notably, he criticizes the general orientation of the appointees rather than taking issue with their individual qualifications.

But the degree with which they may or may not exercise their independence may be seen not just in their review of Government legislation but on the nature and tone of debates in the Senate and its committees:

Still, you’d think there would be at least a smidgen of curiosity about the latest appointees. They’re the first by the new prime minister, the first in three years (since former prime minister Harper gave up in disgust and quit appointing anyone at all), the first under the Liberals’ heralded new arm’s-length advisory council, the first to be appointed entirely as independents, and the opening wave in the Liberals’ proclaimed plan to de-partisan the benighted second chamber.

Surveying the names on the Liberal list of appointees, two thoughts spring to mind. 1. The Liberals appear to have concluded that the best way to escape the sort of Senate controversy that engulfed the Tories is to make the process as boring as humanly possible. 2. Having achieved that, they’ve used public ennui to appoint exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint.

To get the apathy ball rolling, Trudeau’s government announced in January it had appointed a three-member committee to advise it on potential appointees. It had three permanent members: a federal bureaucrat and two academics, plus “ad hoc” members from provinces with vacancies. The first ad hoc advisers included another bureaucrat, the head of a native women’s group, the head of a Quebec doctor’s organization, an athlete, a singer and the head of a charity.

It duly sent some names to Ottawa, from which Trudeau picked his chosen seven: the head of his transition team, a former Ontario NDP cabinet minister, an academic, an “expert on migration and diversity”, a Paralympic athlete, a federalist journalist from Quebec and the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools.

Since the Liberals claim all new senators have to be non-partisan, we’ll have to assume all these people assured the prime minister of their independence, though, looking at the list, it’s not hard to guess they skew pretty much to the left. Not a lot of closet Tories in that group. As my colleague John Robson put it, the list is so predictable of a Liberal government it might have been selected by an affirmative action random-elite-candidate-generator.

And what else would you expect? Examine the membership of the advisory committee and you notice it’s heavy with people paid from the public purse, or dependent on government for grace and favour. Who else would they put forward but Canadians who reflect their own background: public servants, academics, friendly faces, administrators, reliable interest groups and members of other Liberal-friendly operations. They don’t reflect Canada so much as they reflect the Liberals’ view of Canada: people like them; people you see in the salons of Ottawa, people who will be sympathetic to Liberal aspirations and the Liberal way of doing things. Even if, under Trudeau’s directive, they have to promise not to call themselves Liberals.

Source: Kelly McParland: Trudeau’s first senate appointees are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Liberals to appoint

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Kelly McParland: McCallum’s plan to rewrite guide book is a historical stumble

2016/03/08 Leave a comment

Predictably, and legitimately, concern has been raised regarding the plans to revise Discover Canada, the citizenship test study guide.

When providing advice to the Conservative government on the guide in 2009, I argued for greater balance in their choice and treatment of elements, along with messaging, aiming to ensure a guide that would survive any possible change in government (while there was an advisory committee, it never met together to have a fullsome discussion and debate).

In terms of McParland’s particular concerns, while military history is important (and not just the previous peacekeeping focus), so is social history, which Discover Canada largely downplayed. It was a deliberate political choice to downplay the Liberal narrative in favour of a more Conservative one.

The wording of  ‘barbaric cultural practices’ was largely chosen to attract media attention (it worked!). Arguably, it also was a precursor to the Conservatives use of identity politics, seen in the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act and the late unlamented proposed ‘snitch’ line announced by former Ministers Leith and Alexander.

The same points can be made more effectively in the context of the history of women’s equality rights and how ‘honour’ killings and the like are against the law.

While Discover Canada was a marked improvement compared to the ‘insufferable lightness’ of its predecessor, A Look at Canada, my hope that the Liberal government, in revising and renaming the guide, doesn’t make the same mistake. Hopefully, it will keep some of the stronger points in Discover Canada while ensuring a broader narrative, one that lives up to the diversity and inclusion commitment, and speaks to those with both conservative and ‘progressive’ values:

Canadians continue to celebrate the people and events of the time despite the Liberal government’s apparent perplexity. Re-enactments are held each summer. Streets, schools and universities have been named in commemoration of its key figures. Reminders of the war are dotted across regions that are among Canada’s most popular tourist areas.

Handout

HandoutLaura Secord became one of Canada’s first heroes for warning of an impending American attack. featured in The War of 1812.

There is an unfortunate and dispiriting tendency in current culture to try and re-interpret the past. Oddly, it is deemed inappropriate to honour the events that made Canada a country and set the foundation for the culture we’ve become. We would prefer to condemn previous generations for lacking our own views, as if 19th century Canadians should somehow have shared the perspective of a future society they could never imagine.

The Liberals have shown an eagerness to roll back any initiative they view as too reflective of their Conservative predecessors. McCallum would do well to recognize that Canada’s history does not belong to any particular political party. He should be expanding efforts to acquaint Canadians with their history, not trying to erase it from guidebooks for the sake of a cheap political snub.

Source: Kelly McParland: McCallum’s plan to rewrite guide book is a historical stumble

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Kelly McParland: Refugee hysteria reaches a new low with plan to search migrants for jewelry

2015/12/18 Leave a comment

Contrast with Canadian approach striking, as is sad state of conservatism:

Perhaps it had to come to this.

In the squalid competition for the most wretched position on Middle East refugees, Denmark can claim a new low. Having already placed an ad in Lebanese newspapers making clear to asylum-seekers they weren’t welcome, the Danish government is debating a new measure: it wants to seize their jewelry.

In an email to the Washington Post, the Danish integration ministry said the bill — which is expected to pass — would empower officials to search the clothes and luggage of asylum-seekers “with a view to finding assets which may cover the expenses.” Authorities would allow claimants to keep “assets which are necessary to maintain a modest standard of living, e.g. watches and mobile phones,” or which “have a certain personal, sentimental value to a foreigner.”

It is only looking for items with considerable value: for example, the minister of justice said on TV, refugees arriving with a suitcase full of diamonds.

One wonders why a person with a suitcase full of diamonds would need to plead for a place to live, especially one as distant and chilly as Denmark. And while they’re at it, why not search their teeth for gold fillings? But the abject assault on people fleeing the chaos of Syria and Iraq isn’t troubled by simple logic. It’s all about fear, bias and discrimination. Unfortunately, it’s also a cause that has been taken up with enthusiasm by right-wing politicians and ultra-conservative governments, who see political gain to be had in spreading hysteria.

Akos Stiller/Bloomberg

Akos Stiller/BloombergHungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban

Conservatism is not about hate, bigotry or exploiting the needy. But its brand is in danger of being permanently tarred by the outspoken braying of demagogues like Donald Trump, or small-minded governments like those in Denmark, Poland and Hungary. The Hungarian government’s response to the flood of people fleeing Syria was to erect a razor-wire fence, accompanied by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s declaration that Muslims were not welcome and his rejection of European Union resettlement quotas. Hungary’s fence forced others to soon erect their own, as each sought to direct asylum-seekers elsewhere.

The ugliness of discrimination is not lessened by the political gains it sometimes brings.

Poland’s newly-elected right-wing government announced it would refuse to accept the 4,500 refugees assigned it under the quota system, reversing the acceptance of the previous government.

Trump, of course, has assured himself the attention he so openly craves with increasingly loathsome remarks about the purported threat of the refugee hordes. His proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. — even though the U.S. has millions of honest and patriotic Muslim citizens – has been overwhelmingly denounced, but succeeded in cementing his runaway lead in the Republican presidential sweepstakes.

The ugliness of discrimination is not lessened by the political gains it sometimes brings. The more Trump is attacked, the more support he seems to gain. Orban’s policies were initially reviled, but have been highly popular in Hungary and are now being quietly studied across the EU. Poland’s government was elected on the back of anti-immigrant fervour, and includes a stark anti-Semitic streak.

It’s a trend that should be roundly condemned, and resisted at all costs.  The new Liberal government, of course, has begun accepting — indeed, welcoming — refugees to Canada, and has pledged more aid for those still overseas. Canada’s interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose has made clear her party welcomes refugees and will continue Canada’s tradition as “a compassionate country and … compassionate people.” The point can’t be made strongly enough, and whoever succeeds Ambrose as leader should ensure it is a bedrock of future policies. There will come a time when the hysteria will subside and people will look back in embarrassment at the ugliness of the debate it has inspired. Canadians should ensure that when that time comes, they won’t be among those with something to regret.

Source: Kelly McParland: Refugee hysteria reaches a new low with plan to search migrants for jewelry

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Kelly McParland: Donald Sutherland is from Canada the same way Mike Duffy is from PEI

2015/07/31 1 Comment

Good piece by McParland:

The Appeal Court’s reasoning is sound.

“Permitting all non-resident citizens to vote would allow them to participate in making laws that affect Canadian residents on a daily basis but have little to no practical consequence for their own daily lives,” wrote Justice George Strathy.

The decision notes that allowing long-term expats to vote would violate a “social contract” that binds Canadians to laws that they have played a hand in creating.

This makes absolute sense. For every fervent patriot like Sutherland, who presumably lives in the U.S. due to the demands of his acting career, there are tens of thousands, of passport-holders who barely give Canada a thought. At the time the five-year rule was introduced, Canada was in the process of handing out thousands of passports to “investors” who wanted it mainly as a hedge against turmoil in their home country. If you recall, one of Stephen Harper’s earliest international acts as prime minister was a dramatic evacuation of Canadian passport-holders from Lebanon during a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah forces. It was great theatre, except Canadians learned that thousands of those affected proved to be Lebanese citizens who had met the minimum standards for a Canadian passport before returning home, hanging on to the Canadian document in case of just such an emergency. They knew little about Canada, but without the five-year rule, 50,000 of them would have had the right to vote.

Lebanon is far from the only country where that’s the case. The Vancouver Sun reported in 2013 there were 350,000 residents of Hong Kong holding Canadian passports, and that Asians continue to leave the country in large numbers after completing the minimum requirements. Immigration experts acknowledged many never intended to stay and were merely taking advantage of Canada’s traditional generosity with its citizenship.

The five-year rule may be an inconvenience for Sutherland, who comes across as far less arrogant and self-important than fellow Canadian Neil Young, who prefers jetting into the country just long enough to demand Alberta cripple its economy by getting out of the oil business, before jetting back to California. But both are Canadian the same way Mike Duffy is from Prince Edward Island: it might be where they came from, but it’s not where they live. Even Canada’s Senate now understands that difference.

Kelly McParland: Donald Sutherland is from Canada the same way Mike Duffy is from PEI

And Professor Orwin making a similar point about the link between residency and voting:

Yes, the Charter of Rights proclaims voting a basic right of citizenship. But how far does that right extend? As we’ve already seen, only to the boundaries of one’s riding of primary residence. This is an essential feature of our system. It’s the sacred democratic right of Fort McMurrayites (and conversely of downtown Torontonians) that outsiders not be permitted to vote in their riding. Our representative must be ours, and no one else’s. So while Canadian citizenship may be a necessary condition of voting in a given election, it’s obviously not a sufficient one. This is why it’s mistaken to claim that by denying an expatriate the vote, we are stripping her of anything enjoyed by other Canadians. Rather it’s that by permitting her to vote the current law grants her a right denied to other Canadians. Yes, for five years and no more, but she should be grateful for those years, recognizing (having read this column) just what an anomaly she enjoys.

It’s not just in granting five years of electoral amnesty that the present law is quite generous. It is also so in offering expatriates a varied menu of possible electoral residences. They may choose their last previous Canadian address; but they also enjoy other options equally ungrounded in reality. Let’s face it, once Ms. Choi has decided to live abroad, it is the merest fiction to deem her still resident in my riding. As the years pass this fiction grows ever more glaring, and my neighbours and I increasingly testy. Who is this annoying phantom who pretends to live in our riding and insists on voting there? What does she know or care of our local concerns?

 If I can’t vote in your riding, why should expats vote in mine? 

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