Of note from former British Columbia premier and Liberal minister:
….After decades of frustration over the West’s indifference to the Khalistani menace, India finally sees signs of progress, as the Trump administration appears to be acting on the threat in the United States. Following U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s meetings with Indian officials in New Delhi in March, the FBI arrested a Khalistani terrorist with suspected links to the ISI.
While inviting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 Summit in Alberta was a welcome move to mend Canada-India relations, the Carney government can ill-afford to continue ignoring the Khalistani threat.
As the past four decades have shown, permitting extremist groups with criminal tendencies to operate unbridled in Canada has severely undermined the country’s national security and public safety interests.
The Khalistan movement is not a legitimate political cause. It is an extremist, hate-fest-cum-transnational-criminal-entity that was responsible for Canada’s deadliest terror attack and has made our streets less safe. There is nothing Canadian about a movement that radicalizes children to hate, and threatens and glorifies the assassination of foreign leaders.
As former prime minister Stephen Harper rightly counselled, it’s time for Canada’s political class to “sever” ties with Khalistani separatists and treat them with the contempt that murderous terrorists and criminals deserve.
The latest survey on attitudes towards integration. Questions not that nuanced, and the usual contradiction between two-thirds being satisfied “with how well immigrants are integrating” and an equal number who believe “minorities should do more to fit in better with mainstream Canadian society.”
The online survey was conducted in early September from a sample of 3,904 Canadians. The results have a 2.5 per cent margin of error 19 times out of 20.
The poll was conducted in the wake of a series of issues that dogged politicians as they contested last year’s federal election: a proposed ban on niqabs in public service; the Syrian refugee crisis; and terrorist attacks both in Europe and on Parliament Hill.
The results also hint at why Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch believes she may be onto a winning issue by asking supporters their thoughts on vetting would-be immigrants and refugees for “anti-Canadian values.”
According to the poll, two-thirds of Canadians say they’re “satisfied” with how well new immigrants are integrating into their communities.
That figure seems to fly in the face of another result, because an equal number said they believe “minorities should do more to fit in better with mainstream Canadian society.”
‘Unthinking or mindless multiculturalism’
Former B.C. premier and Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh has written and spoken extensively about the need to address concerns about equality, race and culture in the face of blind devotion to multiculturalism.He said the poll shows Canada’s political leadership needs to pay attention.
“What you want is creative multiculturalism, generous multiculturalism, but not unthinking or mindless multiculturalism where everything anybody brings to this country is acceptable,” he said.
“Diversity is great if we can begin to live with each other in equality, in understanding … but we also understand our collective obligations to building a better society. If we can’t live together with each other properly and make concessions to each other, then this phrase that politicians use — that diversity is a strength — is nonsensical.”
I had coffee this week with three Canadian friends — one of us was born in Egypt, one in Hong Kong, one in Iran and one in Canada (me) — and the subject arose: Is there a relationship between Metro Vancouver’s out-of-control housing prices and racism?
We battered around a few arguments, including that the hundreds of thousands of transnational migrants and investors who have discovered Metro Vancouver in the past decade cannot be morally blamed, individually, for the city’s astronomical housing costs. That is, except for those involved in corruption or tax evasion.
In most cases, transnational migrants, many wealthy and with dual citizenship, are simply doing what anyone in their situation would do if they could afford it: Investing in Canadian real estate to create a safe economic landing for their families outside their often-troubled countries of origin.
While our coffee group recognized some people might scapegoat migrants from certain countries, especially Mainland China, we acknowledged the most crucial thing is to get up to speed on the multiple factors behind runaway housing prices — so we can encourage governments to finally do something to ease them.
Our discussion led me to conclude that the debate over housing affordability does not need to be dominated by race or ethnicity.
It should zero in on public policies that will help Metro Vancouver be a real community — a place not only of ethnic diversity, but of economic diversity, where power is mostly in the hands of the people and the gap between the poor, middle class and rich does not widen more than it has already.
That means discussing policy options, such as whether and how to impose a tax on foreign speculators, tax empty houses, stop international money laundering and tax avoidance, curtail Quebec’s immigrant-investor program, enforce rules in the real-estate industry, add social housing, increase zoning density, adjust immigration levels, shift interest rates and stop foreign donations to B.C. politicians.
But many Canadians don’t seem comfortable with such debates, unlike many in Europe and elsewhere, where it’s generally expected one will be up for a rousing dinner-table discussion about politics, money and power.
Rather than talking about overriding issues such as economic equality and justice, Canadians seem to find it easier, more socially acceptable, to talk about so-called identity politics; which emphasizes ethnicity, gender and individual freedoms.
As a result, in Canada, racial discrimination, or the possibility of it, is often the go-to topic. That’s so even while international agencies continue to rank Canada the most “tolerant” country in the world in regards to immigration. See the recent global surveys by Britain’s respected Legatum Institute and the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based non-profit.
When it comes to housing, why do a relative few British Columbian voices remain fixated on racial issues?
It’s easy to dismiss real estate industry lobbyists who accuse those worried about high housing prices as racist or xenophobic — since their vested interest for the past three decades has been to distract politicians from imposing policies that might cool the flow of foreign money into the market.
Some other Canadians concerned about racism don’t have such dubious motives, but I’m convinced much of their super-vigilance arises out of a misunderstanding of the definition of racism.
The Oxford Dictionary understanding of racism is quite specific. It’s not as sweeping as believed by some people, including the liberal arts academics who build their careers on alleging that “undertones” of racism exist where they may not.
The Oxford Dictionary defines racism as: “Prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.”
While the housing crisis may trigger some hard-core racists — people who actually do discriminate based on the belief their ethno-cultural group is superior — there is no evidence such behaviour is widespread in Canada or Metro Vancouver.
Residents of Metro would have a right to be morally concerned no matter where the billions of dollars flooding into the city’s housing market was coming from.
If, theoretically, it were pouring in from tens of thousands of Caucasians based in Kelowna, strong feelings, including resentment, and ethical concerns, including in regards to equality, would be justified.
A number of prominent Canadians who are committed to ethnic diversity and social justice tend to agree.
Vancouver’s housing debate “is not about racism. It’s about a difference in economic power,” said Clarence Cheng, former chief executive officer of B.C.’s SUCCESS Foundation, which supports program for immigrants. “It’s about the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.”
Albert Lo, head of the Canada Race Relations Foundation, says there’s nothing wrong with collecting information on the national origins of people buying and selling houses in Metro Vancouver, in part because it could combat tax evasion.
“In Canada, we are so used to the idea of tolerance that we sometimes find it odd to look at nationalities. That causes some people to jump up and start using the word ‘racism.’ I don’t think it’s helpful,” says Lo.
Ujjal Dosanjh, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, lambastes politicians and property developers who misuse the word “racist” to stifle debate over important issues. He says people have to acknowledge the great distance Canadians have come in overcoming bigotry of the early 20thcentury.
UBC planning professor emeritus Setty Pendakur, who has advised the Chinese government, says hyper-vigilant worries about inter-cultural tensions provide a convenient coverup for wealthy investors, whether Canadian-born or from abroad, who “park illegal money here or avoid Canadian taxes.”
Vancouver’s Justin Fung, a member of Housing Action for Local Taxpayers or HALT, says “cries of racism” sidetrack British Columbians from facing the hard policy decisions that will be necessary if we are to ever again link Metro Vancouver wages to housing costs.
So, if as a society we can manage to stay focused on the central issue, how do we institute policies that will help Metro Vancouver become a place where average families can afford to buy or rent decent housing?
Even though it’s ethically fine to collect data on the nationalities of buyers and sellers — and, more importantly, on the country in which they are “residents for tax purposes” — any policies to cool down the housing market must, of course, be universal.
We should expect colour-blindness in all policies designed to counter runaway housing prices — including those that deal with speculation, empty houses, international money laundering, real estate trickery, social housing, political party financing or immigration policy.
The problem is that some hyper-vigilant peoples’ understanding of racism is so sweeping that even after I wrote last week about how B.C. politicians should stop being among the few in the world to accept political donations from foreign companies — someone suggested such a ban may be “xenophobic.”
If that’s the case, virtually the entire world is xenophobic. That includes those who operate The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which covers 35 countries, including Canada.
The OECD, a defender of democracy and sovereignty, recently made it clear that citizens of a nation have a perfect right to protect themselves from transnational powers and money.
As a February OECD report plainly said: “Political parties need to be responsive to their constituents and not influenced by foreign interests.”
Ujjal Dosanjh and others on the Komagata Maru apology:
Justin Trudeau, for instance, promised before the 2015 campaign to apologize in Parliament because some Punjabi-Canadians were upset that his predecessor, Stephen Harper, had tendered an apology on behalf of Canada at an event in Surrey.
“As Pierre Trudeau predicted, it’s becoming a slippery slope. There’s no end to it. And there are other apology-seekers at the gates now.”
He said his only exception is in accepting Harper’s apology to Aboriginal Canadians for residential schools in 2008 and Mulroney’s to Japanese-Canadians two decades earlier as both involved Canadian citizens.
But he said even in these cases, he is only accepting the reality of these apologies after the fact. In retrospect, Dosanjh said, he wishes Pierre Trudeau’s successors had followed his lead.
“Just because there’s an apology there won’t be an end to racism,” he said. “It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and there’s going to be no poverty or inequality or discrimination. That’s where the efforts need to be.”
Dosanjh also criticized Trudeau for announcing his pending apology last month at a Sikh religious event in Ottawa, saying it’s “dangerous” to mix religion and politics.
B.C. Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, whose wife’s great-grandfather was on the Komagata Maru and who was wounded and imprisoned after the riot, said he strongly disagrees with Dosanjh.
“This symbolizes who we are as Canadians, it’s hugely symbolic,” said the MP for Surrey Centre. “It helps heal wounds, and you feel more Canadian once a wrong has been righted.”
B.C. historian Hugh Johnston said Tuesday that both Justin Trudeau and Harper, rather than apologize for a single incident, should have focused instead on the policy that severely restricted immigration from “non-traditional” countries like India before the 1960s.
“The really big thing is the policy over half a century, not just one incident,” said Johnston, author of The Voyage of the Komagata Maru, the first authoritative book on the incident.
Canada went from a country of roughly 30,000 Sikhs in 1971 to about a half-million today, he noted.
“That strikes me as more significant than turning back a ship with less than 400 people aboard in 1914,” said Johnston, whose book was first published in 1979 and revised and expanded in 2014.
But Johnston, like Dosanjh, questions the notion that politicians should apologize over events in the past.
“I’m an historian. I share Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s view. You can’t rewrite history.
Perspective from former British Columbia Premier and federal cabinet minister Dosanjh:
Suffering is difficult to compare — and the fact such global acts of racism are more enormous than what has happened in B.C. or Canada does not lessen the pain for those who have been discriminated against here.
Nevertheless, when former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh first came to Canada almost 50 years ago, he was among the many newcomers who found the West Coast a “fair and inclusive” place compared to where he had been.
After growing up in the Punjab region of South Asia and later moving to Britain, Dosanjh was relieved to come to B.C. and get away from the exceptional “colour consciousness” and harsh caste system he had experienced in India.
The budding young lawyer was also pleased to leave behind the marauding “skin heads and teddy boys” of England, where maverick politician Enoch Powell had just made his infamous 1968 “rivers of blood” speech about unchecked immigration.
B.C.’s record in regards to racism is “not great historically,” says Dosanjh, who served in the federal Liberal cabinet following years as a provincial NDP cabinet minister and premier.
Still, Dosanjh believes it’s wise to put past incidents of B.C. racism into perspective.
“We have learned in B.C. And we’ve been moving forward, including on the First Nations file. To not acknowledge the distance we have come is to do an injustice to Canada,” he says.
Dosanjh remains painfully aware of the ruthless bigotry promulgated elsewhere today, and not only by ISIS. He knows hundreds of millions of India’s lower castes are still discriminated against as “unclean” and that China continues to brutally target Muslim ethnic minorities.
The term racism is often abused in Canada, Dosanjh believes. Last week he gained national attention, and applause, for challenging how Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne tossed out the epithet.
When Wynne suggested people criticizing the federal government’s promise to rapidly bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada were masking “racism and xenophobia,” Dosanjh said Wynne had “in one fell swoop” insulted not only him but the 67 per cent of Canadians who disagreed with the government.
Dosanjh believes Wynne was trying to silence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s critics by lobbing the often-misused word (which the Oxford Dictionary helpfully defines as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”).
Similarly, people of many ethnicities have charged Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and the city’s housing developers with manipulating the racist label to shut down protests about the way international investors are fuelling Metro Vancouver’s astronomical housing prices.
In ethics, the principal of proportionality is key. In just-war theory, the response to an act of aggression should be proportional to the initial violence. In the courts, the punishment should fit the crime.
Is it possible that many charges about B.C.’s history of racism are disproportionate?
For his part, Dosanjh said he “doesn’t recognize” the portraits of a horrifyingly racist B.C. often painted by academics and activists.
“Some experts become vested in continuing to say what they’re saying even when things have changed. They focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else. It’s like a new religion; after it starts, it ossifies.”
Does it create unnecessary division to allege that racial intolerance has been worse that it actually has been?
It’s crucial to remain on guard and denounce racism whenever it arises. But, in the name of proportionality and building community, it’s also important not to exaggerate it.
Vancouver South Conservative MP Wai Young’s contentious political remarks about Jesus and the Air India bombing are not out of the ordinary in some Canadian churches, says a specialist on evangelicals and Chinese Christians.
“They’re remarkably fascinating comments, but they’re not sensational,” said Justin Tse, a post-doctoral student at the University of Washington who earned his UBC PhD studying religion and trans-national migrants.
The evangelical pastors who head Harvest City Church in East Vancouver, where Wai spoke in late June, “felt her talk was so uncontroversial that they posted it on their website,” said Tse.
The national media is buzzing over comments Wai made during the service, in which she linked the federal Conservative party’s decision to launch anti-terrorist Bill C51 to the courage of Jesus Christ, “who served and acted to always do the right thing, not the most popular thing.”
Young, one of about 100,000 Chinese evangelical Christians in Metro Vancouver, also defended Bill C-51 by telling the Pentecostal congregation that Canada’s spy agency knew there was a bomb on the Air India flight that exploded over the coast of Ireland in 1985, killing 329 people, mostly Canadians. Young has retracted that statement. Her constituency office sent out a statement in which Young says she “misspoke,” adding “I regret this error.”
Tse said Young’s talk, one of others that she has made at Vancouver churches in recent months, was designed to appeal to evangelicals by portraying Jesus as a leader who “built community” — particularly one who did so within the framework of a “Conservative party ideology.”
Young’s talk at the church, Tse said, equated community and nationhood “with strong security.” The MP, a former provider of services to immigrants, stressed the importance of anti-terrorist legislation, firm borders, fighting crime and lowering taxes.
… Debra Bowman, the minister of Vancouver’s Ryerson United Church, echoed the views of many of Young’s critics when she urged the federal Conservatives to put as much effort into probing the charitable tax status of Tory-friendly churches as it does to auditing environmental and other non-profit groups.
“The thing I find really upsetting isn’t so much (Young’s) dreadful Christological claims for Harper’s Conservatives,” said Bowman. She was more concerned about the way the backbench MP appears to be flouting Canada Revenue rules on politically partisan activity by religious groups.
“I really hope someone will track whether (such churches) come under the same financial scrutiny that many justice-environment-church groups have been experiencing,” said Bowman.
Harvest City Church released a statement late Wednesday saying Young’s “comments were her own and Harvest City Church does not endorse her comments, nor any political party, nor does it endorse the use of its facility as a political platform.”
…Former federal Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh, who lost the predominantly Asian-immigrant riding to Young in 2011, said the Hong-Kong-born politician is a “well-meaning” backbench MP who would not have access to high-level information about Canada’s spy service or the Air India bombing.
While commenting that Young’s comparison of Jesus to the federal Tories amounts to “political pandering” that is “pretty far out,” Dosanjh focused on how he believes the Vancouver South MP made key mistakes in her analysis of the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182.
… Dosanjh said he cannot imagine any way that CSIS knew there was a bomb on the Air India plane. He also said the laws that existed in the mid-1980s did not bar CSIS from sharing such crucial security information.
With the rise of Sikh extremism in the 1980s, in which “Sikh temples in B.C. were used as bully pulpits by politicians and others,” Dosanjh said he became more and more convinced that no religious organization should be used for partisan political speeches.
Dosanjh said that period of time, in which he was severely beaten by Sikh extremists, “taught me that the separation of religion and state is very important. One should never make politically partisan statements in a religious institution. From my perspective she (Young) crossed the line. But I’m not picking on her. She’s not the only one. It happens frequently.”
A bit of an incoherent piece by former British Columbia Premier and Federal Cabinet Minister Dosanjh on multiculturalism, forgetting that multiculturalism was always anchored within Canadian history and cultures, but yet open – within constitutional and legal limits – to other cultures.
It was never about “parity” or complete cultural relativism, even if some may have claimed so, and any rights asserted under multiculturalism had to be balanced with other rights:
Proponents of “no Canadian culture” show an abysmal ignorance of the fact of the diverse aboriginal cultures that claimed Canada as home long before the European onslaught. Canada has always had a culture of its own. It was not a blank slate when the Europeans came nor is it now. We must vigorously and justly make that claim. In the absence of a robust claim for the primacy of the now enduring Canadian culture of justice, equality, compassion and diversity, with all its warts for all to see, Gad Horowitz’s description of “multiculturalism as masochistic sharing of Canadian nothingness” may not be far off the mark. For that Pierre Trudeau’s Charter may be to blame. Who said all politicians do not pander in their own time?
The belief of some that Canada has no culture of its own at any given time up to now, by definition, renders Canada savage, waiting to be ‘civilised’ by the newcomers-the civilisers. The holders of this belief easily come to the ‘logical’ conclusion that Canada ‘needs’ culture and nothing could be better than their own culture. Human beings in different civilisations have believed from time immemorial that “they are the chosen people” and if you so believed, and Canada you believed had no culture of its own, you would think you are doing Canada a favour by lending it your presence and culture.
The Charter reference to “multicultural heritage” has also acted as a seed for the germination and advancement of the principle of parity of all cultures and traditions found in Canada. This phenomenon is easy to understand given a commonly whispered belief, among generations of newcomers, of a weak or a nonexistent Canadian Culture. The idea of parity could prove rather inimical to the need for integration into the Canadian mainstream; because “all streams are main”. In the long run unless we are careful we can kiss good bye to robust social solidarity and social cohesion- a sin qua non for a harmonious and inclusive Canada at peace with itself.
Douglas Todd captures the ongoing debate on new Canadians and Canadian values.
I tend to favour Tung Chan’s more pragmatic approach but with a bit more teeth with respect to public and private institutions in terms of setting accommodation limits when they conflict with fundamental equality rights:
Rohani, a businessman who has sat on RCMP diversity committees, and Dosanjh, a lawyer whose biography will be released on Aug. 5, want prospective immigrants to Canada to be taught the essentials of liberal democracy and equality.
“Speaking as an immigrant, if we choose Canada as the best place to come and live, then why aren’t we following its values?” Dosanjh says. “If we want to recreate the society we left behind, why don’t we just stay there? It’s incumbent upon us newcomers to embrace the whole of society, not just its dollars.”
Tung Chan, former head of the government-financed immigrant services society, SUCCESS, is a friend of Rohani’s. But he’s more sanguine about the religion-rooted hazards facing liberal democracy.
Chan would prefer not to highlight the difficulties associated with what he claims in Canada is only the “one per cent who are mal-adapted” and don’t embrace free choice and equality.
Although Chan agrees with Rohani and Dosanjh that new immigrants and all Canadians should be taught about the country’s laws, Constitution, and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Chan takes a hands-off approach beyond that.
“After the teaching is done,” Chan says, “whether they choose to accept or reject our value system is entirely up to them as long as they do not break the law.”
Dosanjh strongly disagrees, maintaining Canadians shouldn’t be so shy about upholding democratic principles. “Society is not just governed by laws. We have our values, our ethics, our integrity. It’s not a written law, for example, that we should allow people to marry whoever they want to marry.”
Multicultural Meanderings 