ICYMI – Urback: The CAF’s new public ‘prayer ban’ is not an attack on religious freedom

2026/08/11 Leave a comment

Agree:

…To be clear: This directive does not affect how members of the CAF can pray and worship on their own time. The policy also explicitly carves out exceptions for funerals, recognizing that a funeral is considered to be “family-led event that honours the family’s wishes.” It also notes that chaplains are not restricted “during private conservations (counselling), within faith-specific gatherings, or in their spiritual roles.” The new restriction is only when chaplains are speaking at public military ceremonies, where they are acting as representatives of the CAF (and thus the government), and not simply as faith leaders. 

The change is thus less an “attack on freedom of religion” of the individual than it is a move to further secularize the government. That is a good thing; religious freedom in a democracy should mean the ability to practice one’s spiritual beliefs as desired, as well as freedom from religion imposed by the government and by others. In other words, people should be able to pray and observe however they want, as long as it does not meaningfully affect others. …

Another way the CAF could have attempted to achieve religious neutrality (or greater religious neutrality) would have been to mimic what political organizations do in the U.S. Democratic and Republican conventions, for example, are opened or closed with prayers from a variety of faith leaders, including priests, imams, rabbis and so on. But this method would have inevitably left out one or more faith groups, and would also have turned public CAF ceremonies into extended prayer sessions that force members to entertain religious practice that has nothing to do with their service. Removing public religious expression is the better alternative, especially since it imposes no restriction on members’ private prayers. It is hardly the egregious affront to religious freedom that Conservatives are making it out to be, but rather, a sensible (if still a bit incoherent) step for a secular government.

Source: The CAF’s new public ‘prayer ban’ is not an attack on religious freedom

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ICYMI – Urback: Canada does not owe international students a path to residency

2026/07/28 2 Comments

Suspect this represents a majority view even if federal and provincial governments, along with education institutions, were complicit:

…None of this is fair in the very colloquial sense of the word. The Canadian government was explicitly marketing student visas as a path to permanent residency by inviting foreigners to “study, work and stay in Canada,” and prospective students responded in droves. In 2023-24, there were 428,077 student visa-holders in Canada, which was up nearly 50 per cent from just before the pandemic. And the reason why that number exploded was not because people from Punjab were suddenly ecstatic about the opportunity to learn hairdressing at the Eikonic Academy in Mississauga, but because everyone knew it was an easy way to start a new life in Canada. You could even work as much as you wanted while you ostensibly studied for a degree to take back home.

The Canadian government cannot and should not do anything now to placate the international students protesting for PGWP access, even though Ottawa played a major role in setting their expectations in the first place. Canadian residency cannot be for sale, even if the Canadian government dangled the prospect just a few years ago. This is an unfortunate outcome for those who risked everything to start a new life in Canada, but the process was always that: a risk. 

Source: Canada does not owe international students a path to residency

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ICYMI – Urback: Ottawa will start tracking when temporary residents enter and exit. Perhaps it could consider actual enforcement too?

2026/06/10 Leave a comment

Agree:

…In other words, not only has Ottawa not been tracking when non-permanent residents enter and exit the country, it is also not taking enforcement action in cases where fraud has clearly been identified, thus leaving applicants’ files unblemished and clear to apply for permanent residency. 

But the department appears unperturbed. The same day as last week’s committee meeting, where Ms. Diab yielded to the gross inadequacies of Canada’s immigration monitoring systems, the minister announced that Ottawa is fast-tracking permanent residency for up to 33,000 temporary foreign workers. 

It’s a mess, of course, with some changes coming by the end of the year, by which time the government would have fast-tracked permanent residency for tens of thousands, and issued hundreds of thousands of new temporary permits. But perhaps while IRCC is experimenting with its new counting pilot, it might want to run a beta on actual enforcement, so we don’t accidentally grant permanent residency to someone who entered the country fraudulently, or allow those who are not legally permitted to remain in the country to stay. It’s just a thought – something to test out to decide if Canada, a purportedly serious country, wants to maintain it permanently.

Source: Ottawa will start tracking when temporary residents enter and exit. Perhaps it could consider actual enforcement too?

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Urback: It is the right time – socially and economically – to scale back extended health benefits for refugees

2026/02/03 Leave a comment

Not seeing much pushback:

…The problem plaguing the IFHP both in 2012 and in 2026 is the perception of unfairness: Canada’s public health care system does not include coverage for extended services and prescriptions for Canadian citizens and permanent residents, but it does for those eligible for the IFHP. 

There are various arguments that justify that discrepancy, including the fact that refugees often arrive with complex medical needs after years of neglect, and it may be cheaper in the long run to treat them up front. There are various provincial programs that do cover the cost of prescriptions and extended services for low-income Canadians, but asylum-seekers will have more trouble navigating the complex bureaucracy, especially if there is a language barrier. IFHP keeps it simple. 

These arguments were more persuasive in 2012, when the program was a fraction of its current size, and there wasn’t the widespread perception that Canada’s refugee system was being abused. In 2012, roughly 128,000 people were covered by the IFHP. In 2024-2025, that number exploded to 623,365, with expenses totalling nearly $900-million. …

There’s also a social imperative for bringing refugee benefits closer in line with those afforded to Canadian citizens. That’s because, bluntly, the Trudeau government destroyed the immigration consensus in Canada; it brought in so many newcomers, so quickly, that integration was impossible and resentment inevitable. The Carney government is now tightening the rules for student visas, work permits, and asylum claimants, but it will take a lot more than a change in numbers for Canadians to again believe that immigration is a good thing, and to trust that our processes are rigorous and fair. 

Asking refugee-claimants to budget for prescriptions and extended coverage, as many other Canadians do, helps to ameliorate that wounded perception of fairness. Arguably the changes to the IFHP needs to go further, but this is a necessary first step. 

Source: It is the right time – socially and economically – to scale back extended health benefits for refugees

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

Urback: Canada’s hate speech laws don’t need a rewrite. They need to be enforced

2025/12/16 Leave a comment

Agree:

…Whether that was a reasonable conclusion is a matter of debate (who, I wonder, was Mr. Charkaoui referring to when he called for the killing of Zionists?), but the religious exemption under the Criminal Code is not what got him off the hook. And even if Mr. Charkaoui was charged with hate speech and he decided to lean on 319(3)(b) as a defence, the Crown could still make the case that his statements were not a “good faith” reading of a religious text, and that he was willfully promoting hatred with an intention that went well beyond an interpretation of scripture. It seems the problem here – as with many other instances of, for example, protesters intimidating people outside of their homes or places of worship, or individuals spreading hateful messages at public events – is one of enforcement of existing laws and a willingness to prosecute, and not of a subsection defence in the Criminal Code.

It is easy to see why many people would think scrapping the religious exemption is a good thing. Why wouldn’t we want to remove any crutch upon which bigots can rely to get away with spreading messages of hate? But on principle, we should demand government restrictions on speech to be as narrow as possible, so that the law doesn’t end up criminalizing good-faith readings of religious texts. In his capacity as chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Marc Miller, now the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, cited Bible verses he personally considers “hateful.” That’s fine as a matter of personal opinion, but alarming when the government is opening the door to criminal conviction. 

Source: Canada’s hate speech laws don’t need a rewrite. They need to be enforced

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

Urback: The Conservatives are right: Canada should end birthright citizenship

2025/10/11 Leave a comment

Nice to see my work cited and discussion of current and potential numbers:

…It’s difficult to get a complete picture of how many parents who are not citizens or permanent residents are giving birth. Using figures about women who “self-pay” for births at hospitals, Andrew Griffith at Policy Options calculated that tourism births – by which women travel to Canada specifically to give birth – increased to 5,219 in 2024, which is nearly back up to Canada’s prepandemic high. There may be some overlap in that number with the number of births by non-residents, such as temporary foreign workers and international students, since some of them will not be covered by provincial plans or direct-bill insurance from their schools. 

Those who are covered, however, are outside of that calculation. An analysis of hospital deliveries from the early 2010s to 2017 found that approximately 6,000 births annually were by non-permanent residents; “more specifically, around 4,000 births were by temporary foreign workers, more than 1,000 by international students, and around 1,000 by refugee claimants and TR permit holders, annually.”

In the last quarter of 2017, there were nearly 972,000 non-permanent residents living in Canada. By the last quarter of 2024, that number had ballooned to more than 3.1 million. If a comparable proportion of those residents have babies while in Canada, it will mean thousands more children with citizenship whose parents may or may not be entitled to stay in the country, but whose citizenship will absolutely complicate immigration decisions. …

Source: The Conservatives are right: Canada should end birthright citizenship

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with

ICYMI – Urback: Did we really have to make this D-list MAGA singer famous in Canada?

2025/08/05 Leave a comment

Yep:

…But perhaps most irritating of all is that this totally unnecessary controversy has made a MAGA martyr of Sean Feucht: a man who was, and should’ve continued to be, mostly anonymous – a D-list celebrity, if that, in Canada. It is irritating that many of us now know how to pronounce his name; irritating that he has accidentally stumbled upon the type of mainstream attention his brand of worship rock could have never organically drawn; irritating that there will be more eyes on his Pride month posts about the “agenda seeking to destroy our culture and pervert our children.” And irritating that those who value and understand the rights protected by our Charter – of free speech, and free assembly, and freedom from discrimination – have to defend this guy’s rights, even if they loathe what he’s saying. 

Had licensing officials politely shut down the minority of protesters who knew of Mr. Feucht’s existence and objected to his performances, the majority of us could have continued to exist in blissful ignorance, and Mr. Feucht would’ve soon returned to his long list of other grievances. Instead, they’ve set a terrible new precedent for access to public spaces, while inadvertently forcing the rest of us to give him what he clearly desires most: attention.

Source: Did we really have to make this D-list MAGA singer famous in Canada?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Urback: Is the U.S. still a ‘safe’ country for refugees? 

2025/06/07 Leave a comment

Valid question:

…Canada is now trying to make the process a little bit harder. This week, the Liberals tabled an omnibus bill that, among many other things, would render ineligible for asylum those who have been in Canada for more than a year (which addresses the spike in applications from international students who filed refugee claims after the government changed student visa rules in 2024), and would prohibit those who entered Canada via an irregular border crossing to file for refugee protection after 14 days. These are necessary changes that may help to bring Canada’s current four-year-backlog for refugee hearings down to manageable levels. But some people will still try….

But now, those without legal status in the U.S. are being picked up off the streets, thrown into detention centres and, in many cases, deported to third countries without a hearing. The Trump administration is doing that in defiance of court orders, as in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and resisting even the U.S. Supreme Court, which said that the government must “facilitate” the return of those deported in error. 

This matters for Canada because of the principle of non-refoulement under international law, which holds that refugees should not forcibly be returned to countries where they are likely to face cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. 

It used to be hard to argue that migrants sent back under the STCA would face that, but the case seems much easier to make now. Canada should prepare for another challenge to the STCA – and possibly, a different result. 

Source: Is the U.S. still a ‘safe’ country for refugees?

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Urback: Trump’s policies will send asylum seekers to Canada’s border. What’s our plan?

2025/04/12 Leave a comment

Ongoing issue. One encouraging aspect is that virtually all are entering through official border crossings, number of RCMP interceptions appear stable according to February data:

…Yet even if Mr. Trump leaves the STCA intact, Canada should be ready for a crisis anew at our border with the U.S. (which will only compound the crisis we already have with international student no-shows, and the thousands of international students who have claimed asylum amid policy changes in order to stay in the country). Before he left office, Justin Trudeau committed $1.3-billion to tackle a contrived fentanyl crisis at the U.S.-Canada border. Now that Mr. Trump has revealed that his claimed rationale for his tariffs were an utter fabrication, Canada needs to allocate those funds – and then some – toward the real crisis.

Source: Trump’s policies will send asylum seekers to Canada’s border. What’s our plan?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Urback: Society’s brainworms have gotten so bad, we can’t even recognize a swastika as a hate symbol 

2025/02/15 Leave a comment

More on Shopify’s hesitation in doing the obvious:

…Perhaps amid all of this noise, the executives at Shopify lost their bearings, or else feared some sort of bigger blowback if they were seen to capitulate to the mob. But good Lord, guys: we are talking about a swastika, a symbol that is synonymous with the desire for racial purity and the extermination of millions of Jews. This was not a borderline case: It was a Nazi symbol, being sold for profit, on a platform where it’s within the rights of the owners to make decisions based on personal discretion.

It is astounding that Shopify didn’t come out within an hour and announce they were taking down the shop for promoting a hate symbol. Maybe that should be included in their terms of service.

Source: Society’s brainworms have gotten so bad, we can’t even recognize a swastika as a hate symbol

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with

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