The word ‘racism’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the Conservative party’s campaign platform

2021/08/19 Leave a comment

Notable and significant:

Discrimination against visible and religious minorities in Canada has been hotly debated during the year leading up to this summer’s federal election, but the issue gets scant mention in the campaign platform released by the Conservative party this week.

The words “racism” and “antisemitism” do not appear anywhere in the party’s 160-page policy platform, which largely focuses on the fallout and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nor are there any references to Black Canadians.

And in the aftermath of the deadly June attack targeting a Muslim family in London, Ont. — which saw Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole calling for “urgent action” to support Canadian Muslims — the term “Islamophobia” is missing, too.

The omissions are somewhat at odds with the opening notes of the platform, in which O’Toole writes that it is “time for Conservatives to take inequality seriously, because that’s becoming more of a problem in our country,” and says that Canada is a society where “everyone can fulfil his or her potential.”

It also doesn’t address last year’s nationwide call for racial justice, sparked by a reckoning over police brutality targeting Black and Indigenous people.

Instead, the document tackles discrimination and bridge-building through the lens of international human rights and foreign policy, rather than grappling with its existence in Canada.

Among a handful of proposals, the Conservatives would establish an Office of Religious Freedom and Conscience that advises cabinet ministers “on threats to international security, engages in diplomacy to religious communities, and informs Canadian international development programs to promote freedom, pluralism, religious coexistence and tolerance.”

The Conservatives are also promising to appoint the country’s “first Muslim ambassador and first ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation” to help engage with the world’s Muslim-majority nations.

The party also wants to see the creation of an international human rights advisory committee, made up of a “broad range of cultural and religious communities in Canada” to advise the government on issues abroad.

Mustafa Farooq, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said that while the platform is “light” on addressing domestic Islamophobia, it does offer some encouraging promises.

The Tories acknowledged, for example, their support for the Muslim minority Uyghur population in China, and said they would boost funding and expand the accessibility of the Ottawa’s security infrastructure program, which helps protect places of worship and other institutions from hate-motivated attacks.

“Certainly, I would have liked to see clear articulations about … what they’re going to be doing to challenge Islamophobia through clear policy promises and commitments,” Farooq said.

On the other hand, the New Democrats — the only other major federal party to release its policy promises — are running on a platform that has dedicated an entire plank to confronting racism and other forms of discrimination, though the details are vague.

The NDP document emphasizes the rise in hateful incidents facing Muslim, Jewish and Black Canadians, along with Indigenous people. The party is promising to enact a national action plan to “dismantle far-right extremist organizations” and address “white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.” The NDP is also pledging to better identify and catalogue hate-related incidents and how they are handled within Canada’s justice system.

The collection of race-based data, reviewing employment discrimination and addressing the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in the federal prison population also factor into the NDP plan.

Both the NDP and the Conservatives, however, have pledged to counter online hate, with the New Democrats seeking to convene a national working group on the issue and the Tories promising to criminalize statements that encourage violence against other groups while protecting non-violent forms of speech and criticism.

The two parties have also put forth specific reconciliation plans focused on addressing the injustices wrought by the residential school system, self determination, economic development and improving access to clean drinking water.

Source: The word ‘racism’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the Conservative party’s campaign platform

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

CPC Platform: Immigration-related plans and some missing parts

2021/08/17 Leave a comment

Will be preparing a comparative table when the platforms of other parties are out. While Conservatives have five priority themes: jobs, accountability, mental health, strategic stockpile of vaccines and PPE, and economy, the platform contains a myriad of commitments across most areas.

The immigration section is also detailed, covering the following themes: “addressing administrative backlogs, fixing a broken visitor visa system, innovation efficiency and cultural sensitivity, strengthening credential recognition, family reunification, super visas, pathways to permanence, advancing Canada’s interests, reforming Canada’s broken refugee system, and securing our border.”

Striking what is missing: no reference to citizenship and multiculturalism, racism reference pertain to Diefenbaker), no substantive references to diversity and inclusion, no reference to employment equity, no reference to antisemitism or Islamophobia, discrimination references limited to the CAF and (again) to Diefenbaker. Anti-Asian hate including in section “Standing up to China’s aggression.”

The other initial observation is the platform is silent on the question of levels, likely given that any suggestion of reduced levels would provide the other parties an opportunity to paint the CPC as anti-immigrant (unfairly, IMO).

Source: https://www.conservative.ca/plan/

Paul Well’s take:

Increasingly I think detailed campaign platform documents are terrible for governance.

They shackle entire governments, struggling with the unimaginable realities of life three years from now, to the best guesses a few campaign strategists were able to make last month. They crowd out the civil service’s policy-development function, because the first thing a new PM’s transition team says to the Privy Council Clerk who greets them is, “Shush. Do all of this.” They discourage agility amid changing circumstances because everyone’s busy ticking off stale boxes so they can run for re-election on “promise made, promise kept.” They practically guarantee fiscal trouble because who’d ever campaign on an appropriately pessimistic outlook for the economy?

Fie on the whole mess. The best way to run for high office would be to say, “You know me. Meet my team. Do we seem solid? Count on us to handle whatever comes our way.”

Of course I’m outvoted. Constantly. Whatever their worth as blueprints for government, thick platforms often work a charm in campaigns, especially if the goal is to rebut widespread worry that the leader in question is a lightweight or a nutbar. Modern campaign credibility-building was invented by Jean Chrétien’s Liberals in 1992 with Creating Opportunity: The Liberal Plan for Canada, instantly dubbed the Red Book. It transformed Chrétien from a yesterday’s man without a clue to a big thinker with an eye for detail. “It’s in there. Read it,” he’d say. Ontario’s provincial Conservatives under Mike Harris won power back in 1995, after a decade of Liberal and NDP governments, with the Common Sense Revolution pamphlet. And Justin Trudeau did a lot in 2015 to parry perceptions that he was a lightweight with Real Change: A New Plan For a Strong Middle Class (.pdf here). And even though each of those documents would have occasion to cause grief for its authors, they all worked, so they’ve spawned a hundred more or less successful imitators over the years.

This year the emerging novelty is a preference for early platform launches, a repudiation of the notion that you should dribble out your announcements for weeks on end, maintaining suspense and keeping campaign reporters from getting bored. Jagmeet Singh’s NDP went for a big bang last week with the release of the party’s entire platform, Ready For Better. And on Monday Erin O’Toole did the same, releasing the entire platform (Canada’s Recovery Plan) on the campaign’s first full day. Well, all of it except the costing: since it’s up to the Parliamentary Budget Office to check costing claims, and they couldn’t do that in a timely fashion because of the snap election, the costing will come later, Conservative campaign strategists told reporters on Monday. Meanwhile, apparently everything O’Toole is promising is free! I kid.

The problem O’Toole seeks to address is that, to borrow the language I used a few paragraphs ago, lots of people worry he’s a lightweight and a nutbar. A lightweight because a lot of his public pronouncements until now have been comically low on detail—Justin Trudeau got NAFTA wrong, we need a plan, the debate is over, whatever random combination of fridge magnets you want to assemble. A nutbar because he campaigned as a “True Blue” and then discovered his party doesn’t believe the Earth is round, or some such.

Canada’s Recovery Plan (rejected title: Erin O’Toole’s Hail Mary Pass) is an attempt to answer every question anyone will ever have about O’Toole and his party. Surely a doomed attempt—it’s always easy to come up with more questions, this week often featuring the words “nasal swabs”—but ambitious in the trying nonetheless. It starts out a little pre-school (Actual quote from the first page of text: “What is Canada’s Recovery Plan? It’s a plan. A very detailed plan.” Gee thanks, Einstein). But before it’s done it sprawls across nearly twice as many pages as Trudeau’s 2015 platform. The word “detail” and its derivatives appears 54 times, often in chapter titles that read like so much grim found poetry: “A Detailed Plan to Lift Up Working Canadians/ A Detailed Plan to Support Working Families/ A Detailed Plan to Lower Prices/ A Detailed Plan to Tackle Home Prices,” and on and frickin’ on.

Another word frequently spotted in the thing is “support,” also a favourite of the Trudeau government, especially since COVID-19. In Trudeauspeak, “support” means “give money to,” and I suspect O’Toole swiped it to convey the impression this year’s Conservatives are more spendy than previous generations. “Support” and its derivatives appear 190 times in the CPC platform, including a record 23 appearances over the four pages from 108-111. What’s the beneficiary of this four-page burst of support? I was surprised to discover it’s the rest of the world, for it’s in his platform’s foreign-policy section that O’Toole feels most, um, uplifting.

Among the very many things he wants to support: “Taiwan’s participation in multilateral fora”; “a climate-conscious, clean alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative;” “regional security” across “Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and beyond;” “Israel’s existence as a sovereign democratic Jewish state” and “the aspirations of the Palestinian people and a two-state solution leading to a Palestinian state;” and “East Africa with data and infrastructure development.”

So the gauntlet is thrown. If you don’t vote Conservative this year, I guess you just don’t want a digital East Africa. It’ll be interesting to see whether this brick dominates O’Toole’s campaign or whether, having dropped it, he never mentions it again. I’ve seen both happen in various campaigns. It’s a drag that the Parliamentary Budget Officer hasn’t checked the Conservatives’ math, though they swear they’ll fix that in future editions, once the PBO reports. It’s close to a sure thing that amid all these words, there’ll be something to upset Conservatives’ opponents and probably also some supporters. Whatever happens next, at least, O’Toole can tell himself he left everything on the field, and indeed that he put it out there early.

Source: https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/erin-otoole-fills-in-blanks/

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Opinion | The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience – The New York Times

2018/06/27 Leave a comment

As I am working on an article on possible guidelines for panelists and presenters on immigration, found this commentary by Bryan W. Van Norden of interest. His distinction between free speech and being given a platform is valid, and his examples compelling:

On June 17, the political commentator Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Fox News, asserted that crying migrant children separated from their parents are “child actors.” Does this groundless claim deserve as much airtime as, for example, a historically informed argument from Ta-Nehisi Coates that structural racism makes the American dream possible?

Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has complained that men can’t “control crazy women” because men “have absolutely no respect” for someone they cannot physically fight. Does this adolescent opinion deserve as much of an audience as the nuanced thoughts of Kate Manne, a professor of philosophy at Cornell University, about the role of “himpathy” in supporting misogyny?

We may feel certain that Coulter and Peterson are wrong, but some people feel the same way about Coates and Manne. And everyone once felt certain that the Earth was the center of the solar system. Even if Coulter and Peterson are wrong, won’t we have a deeper understanding of why racism and sexism are mistaken if we have to think for ourselves about their claims? And “who’s to say” that there isn’t some small fragment of truth in what they say?

If this specious line of thought seems at all plausible to you, it is because of the influence of “On Liberty,” published in 1859 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill’s argument for near-absolute freedom of speech is seductively simple. Any given opinion that someone expresses is either wholly true, partly true or false.

To claim that an unpopular or offensive opinion cannot be true “is to assume our own infallibility.” And if an offensive opinion is true, to limit its expression is clearly bad for society. If an opinion is partly true, we should listen to it, because “it is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.” And even if an opinion is false, society will benefit by examining the reasons it is false. Unless a true view is challenged, we will hold it merely “in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.”

The problem with Mill’s argument is that he takes for granted a naïve conception of rationality that he inherited from Enlightenment thinkers like René Descartes. For such philosophers, there is one ahistorical rational method for discovering truth, and humans (properly educated) are approximately equal in their capacity for appreciating these truths. We know that “of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed,” Descartes assures us, because “even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have.”

Of course, Mill and Descartes disagreed fundamentally about what the one ahistorical rational method is — which is one of the reasons for doubting the Enlightenment dogma that there is such a method.

If you do have faith in a universal method of reasoning that everyone accepts, then the Millian defense of absolute free speech is sound. What harm is there in people hearing obvious falsehoods and specious argumentation if any sane and minimally educated person can see through them? The problem, though, is that humans are not rational in the way Mill assumes. I wish it were self-evident to everyone that we should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, but the current vice president of the United States does not agree. I wish everyone knew that it is irrational to deny the evidence that there was a mass shooting in Sandy Hook, but a syndicated radio talk show host can make a career out of arguing for the contrary.

Historically, Millian arguments have had some good practical effects. Mill followed Alexis de Tocqueville in identifying “the tyranny of the majority” as an ever-present danger in democracies. As an advocate of women’s rights and an opponent of slavery, Mill knew that many people then regarded even the discussion of these issues as offensive. He hoped that by making freedom of speech a near absolute right he could guarantee a hearing for opinions that were true but unpopular among most of his contemporaries.

However, our situation is very different from that of Mill. We are seeing the worsening of a trend that the 20th century German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse warned of back in 1965: “In endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda rides along with education, truth with falsehood.” This form of “free speech,” ironically, supports the tyranny of the majority.

The media are motivated primarily by getting the largest audience possible. This leads to a skewed conception about which controversial perspectives deserve airtime, and what “both sides” of an issue are. How often do you see controversial but well-informed intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Martha Nussbaum on television? Meanwhile, the former child-star Kirk Cameron appears on television to explain that we should not believe in evolutionary theory unless biologists can produce a “crocoduck” as evidence. No wonder we are experiencing what Marcuse described as “the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda.”

Marcuse was insightful in diagnosing the problems, but part of the solution he advocated was suppressing right-wing perspectives. I believe that this is immoral (in part because it would be impossible to do without the exercise of terror) and impractical (given that the internet was actually invented to provide an unblockable information network). Instead, I suggest that we could take a big step forward by distinguishing free speech from just access. Access to the general public, granted by institutions like television networks, newspapers, magazines, and university lectures, is a finite resource. Justice requires that, like any finite good, institutional access should be apportioned based on merit and on what benefits the community as a whole.

There is a clear line between censoring someone and refusing to provide them with institutional resources for disseminating their ideas. When Nathaniel Abraham was fired in 2004 from his position at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute because he admitted to his employer that he did not believe in evolution, it was not a case of censorship of an unpopular opinion. Abraham thinks that he knows better than other scientists (and better than other Christians, like Pope Francis, who reminded the faithful that God is not “a magician, with a magic wand”). Abraham has every right to express his ignorant opinion to any audience that is credulous enough to listen. However, Abraham does not have a right to a share of the intellectual capital that comes from being associated with a prestigious scientific institution like Woods Hole.

Similarly, the top colleges and universities that invite Charles Murray to share his junk science defenses of innate racial differences in intelligence (including Columbia and New York University) are not promoting fair and balanced discourse. For these prestigious institutions to deny Murray an audience would be for them to exercise their fiduciary responsibility as the gatekeepers of rational discourse. We have actually seen a good illustration of what I mean by “just access” in ABC’s courageous decision to cancel “Roseanne,” its highest-rated show. Starring on a television show is a privilege, not a right. Roseanne compared a black person to an ape. Allowing a show named after her to remain on the air would not be impartiality; it would be tacitly endorsing the racist fantasy that her views are part of reasonable mainstream debate.

Donald Trump, first as candidate and now as president, is such a significant news story that responsible journalists must report on him. But this does not mean that he should be allowed to set the terms of the debate. Research shows that repeatedly hearing assertions increases the likelihood of belief — even when the assertions are explicitly identified as false. Consequently, when journalists repeat Trump’s repeated lies, they are actually increasing the probability that people will believe them.

Even when journalistic responsibility requires reporting Trump’s views, this does not entail giving all of his spokespeople an audience. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” set a good precedent for just access by banning from the show Kellyanne Conway for casually spouting “alternative facts.”

Marcuse also suggested, ominously, that we should not “renounce a priori violence against violence.” Like most Americans, I spontaneously cheered when I saw the white nationalist Richard Spencer punched in the face during an interview. However, as I have noted elsewhere, Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us that nonviolent protest is not only a moral demand (although it is that too); it is the highest strategic cunning. Violence plays into the hands of our opponents, who relish the opportunity to play at being martyrs. Consequently, while it was wrong for Middlebury College to invite Murray to speak, it was even more wrong for students to assault Murray and a professor escorting himacross campus. (Ironically, the professor who was injured in this incident is a critic of Murray who gave a Millian defense of allowing him to speak on campus.)

What just access means in terms of positive policy is that institutions that are the gatekeepers to the public have a fiduciary responsibility to award access based on the merit of ideas and thinkers. To award space in a campus lecture hall to someone like Peterson who says that feminists “have an unconscious wish for brutal male domination,” or to give time on a television news show to someone like Coulter who asserts that in an ideal world all Americans would convert to Christianity, or to interview a D-list actor like Jenny McCarthy about her view that actual scientists are wrong about the public health benefits of vaccines is not to display admirable intellectual open-mindedness. It is to take a positive stand that these views are within the realm of defensible rational discourse, and that these people are worth taking seriously as thinkers.

Neither is true: These views are specious, and those who espouse them are, at best, ignorant, at worst, sophists. The invincibly ignorant and the intellectual huckster have every right to express their opinions, but their right to free speech is not the right to an audience.

via Opinion | The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience – The New York Times

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