Todd: In Canada, ‘housing nationalism’ shouldn’t be an epithet

2025/04/04 Leave a comment

Important reminder and lesson:

…The story of this type of Canadian nationalism, which aims to make it possible for young, working Canadians to have a chance at affordable housing, is spelled out in a new study by B.C. housing experts Joshua Gordon, David Ley and Andy Yan. 

Gordon is with the digital society lab at McMaster University, Ley is author of Housing Booms in Gateway Cities and Yan is director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program.

They rebut big players in the Canadian development industry and their allies, whom they dub the “growth machine.”

These powerful forces are often guilty of “playing the race card” as an “ideological tactic” to stop the public from realizing how offshore capital and wealthy immigrants have contributed to astronomical house prices in Canada, say the authors.

The trio’s paper, Crafting the Narrative: Wealth migration, growth machines and the politics of housing affordability in Vancouver, is published in The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. It is a direct response to a 2023 article by two prominent B.C. researchers that was published in the same journal.

In their article, University of B.C. professor Nathanael Lauster and Vancouver statistician Jens von Bergmann defended investment of offshore capital in Canadian housing, arguing that opposition to the phenomenon is a baseless “moral panic” in the guise of “housing nationalism,” a movement they deem to be a “hammer in search of nails.”

Lauster and von Bergmann argued in their 2023 paper, which echoed the views of many in the development industry, that such economic nationalism “blames and penalizes the foreign” and, specifically, is “anti-Chinese.”

In addition to their high profiles as commentators in the media, Lauster and von Bergmann were key players in the legal attempt to force the repeal of B.C.’s foreign-buyers tax, which failed. B.C. Appeal Court judges concluded in 2019 the tax didn’t promote racism or reinforce “racial stereotypes” about people from Asia.

The new paper by Gordon, Ley and Yan compiles data showing foreign capital has indeed been a dramatic factor in raising B.C. housing values, a fact they say is often “celebrated behind closed doors by the real estate industry.”

Their paper frequently quotes business speeches by Vancouver condo marketer Bob Rennie, including when he told an audience of developers that buyers from Mainland China were at one point responsible for 90 per cent of the homes sold for more than $2 million on the west side of Vancouver.

The tremendous volume of high-end housing purchases by non-Canadians was confirmed in a 2015 study by Yan. This new paper provides further context. It notes how what was happening to Metro Vancouver was also occurring at the same time in the U.S., which, unlike Canada, keeps track of foreign investment in property.

The U.S., between 2015 and 2018, experienced a six-times surge in the volume of housing purchases made by buyers from China. The multi-billions of dollars were much more geographically spread around than in Canada, however, where the money was concentrated in Vancouver and Toronto.

While acknowledging that some people can indeed be xenophobic, Gordon, Ley and Yan say there is no evidence of that in regard to opposition to excessive foreign capital in Canadian housing. Polls, they say, show popular resistance to these global flows of capital came from across ethnic groups, including people of Chinese ancestry.

The scholars also provide evidence that B.C. residents’ grassroots opposition to “foreign ownership” — a term in which they include “satellite families” who earn most of their money outside of the country, where it’s not subject to Canadian taxation — has come largely from centrist and left-wing people.

They explain how B.C.’s foreign-buyers tax, and the speculation and vacancy tax, have been moderately successful in curbing house-price inflation.

Before the two taxes were introduced in 2016 and 2018 the west side of Vancouver had seen detached house prices jump by 67 per cent between 2014 and 2016. Prices in the same two-year period spiked by a “remarkable” 84 per cent in Richmond.

After the two taxes came into effect, the price of houses in the same parts of the city, which had drawn the most interest from foreign buyers and rich investor immigrants, fell by about one-fifth.

Reflecting on political philosophy, the authors take exception to Lauster and von Bergmann’s claim that opposition to such price jumps came from “reactionaries,” a term normally used to describe right-wing people who oppose progress or reform.

Their article says protective policies like the foreign buyers and speculation taxes have instead had “egalitarian effects, generating tax revenue from landowners, property developers and wealthy buyers that helped support government spending on lower-income individuals, including affordable housing.”

The authors, including Ley, a UBC geography professor emeritus who this week publicly endorsed the candidacy of TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick in Vancouver’s April 5 byelection, recommend a novel idea for governments to go further in limiting foreign wealth in B.C. housing.

“More aggressive action is possible,” they say, “such as property surtaxes that can be offset by income tax paid, with exemptions for seniors, which would more comprehensively tax foreign-capital-based home ownership.”

The authors readily acknowledge the “growth machine” opposes such policy ideas: It would rather continue to “instrumentalize charges of racism to support neo-liberal agendas” and maximize profits.

The trouble, suggest the authors, is that such name-calling taints legitimate debate about housing and the nature of healthy nationalism.

Source: In Canada, ‘housing nationalism’ shouldn’t be an epithet

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As birth tourism rises again, will Trump’s citizenship moves send more Canada’s way?

2025/02/04 Leave a comment

Some good reporting on the local birth tourism “industry” and their expectations regarding possible increased business resulting from Trump threats (my analysis referenced, would be nice to see some reporting from the GTA, given the number of hospitals with significant portions of non-resident self-pay births).

For those who worry that any measures might affect the vulnerable, the cost for birth tourism “packages” for Chinese nationals is, according the operators cited, in the order of $100,000:

Vancouver-based birth tourism operator Liga Lin says her phone has been buzzing with inquiries from expectant mothers since U.S. President Donald Trump moved to end American birthright citizenship.

Lin’s business, New Joy Postpartum Care, arranges accommodation and services for non-resident women — mostly from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong — who want to give birth in Canada, granting their children automatic citizenship rights.

The industry also exists in the U.S., but Trump’s executive order seeking to end the right to citizenship at birth on American soil has thrown it into disarray, even as the measure was blocked by a U.S. district court judge who called it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, known in English as RedNote, has numerous discussions among people in China about whether they should stick to their plan to give birth in the U.S. or switch to other countries with birthright citizenship, such as Canada.

Lin — whose packages can cost up to about $100,000 including housing, a nanny, a housekeeper and massages, recalled a phone call from a Chinese woman already in a U.S. “birth house,” panicking over Trump’s announcement.

“She is very worried, and she asked me if there is any similar move going on in Canada. She wanted to come to Canada instead,” Lin said in an interview in Mandarin.

Birth tourism in Canada slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Lin and other British Columbia operators say inquiries from potential birth tourists are spiking since Trump’s election last year, and his recent executive order.

You Wu has run a “maternity care agency” in the Metro Vancouver city of Richmond, B.C., since 2013.

“My company has experienced an increase in consultation requests after Trump came into power. The most noticeable change is many clients deciding to switch from the U.S. to Vancouver,” Wu said in Mandarin.

She said there was a sense of urgency, compared with other times when potential clients would question her closely and hesitate to sign contracts.

“It’s fantastic news for people who work in this industry in Vancouver,” Wu said of the shift. 

Andrew Griffith is a former director-general of the Department Citizenship and Immigration, who has tracked the ups and downs of the birth tourism industry in Canada.

He said Trump’s executive order would require a constitutional amendment to stand, but it had already created uncertainty and panic among would-be U.S. birth tourists. 

“It’ll make it eventually to the Supreme Court, but in the meantime, there’ll be lots of chaos, lots of worries,” said Griffith.

He has released data showing the number of birth tourists to Canada “declined dramatically” during COVID-19 due to travel restrictions, dropping by 50 per cent. 

But he said births to non-residents are now back near pre-pandemic levels, jumping last year by 46 per cent to an estimated 5,219. 

That is only about 1.5 per cent of all births in Canada, although critics of birth tourism point to the potential burden on hospitals where the practice is most common.

“The number of births is quite small, but it does have an effect on the perception of fairness,” said Griffith.

Dr. Jon Barrett, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McMaster University, published an opinion letter in the Journal of Obstetrics and Genaecology Canada in 2023, saying Canadian hospitals and physicians should have “absolutely zero tolerance” for birth tourism, and decline to accept these patients into care, unless it was urgent.

Doctors, he said, “should unite in a firm stand against birth tourism”, which put hospitals at risk of “significant shortfalls” if a birth went wrong, and birth tourists at risk of being “fleeced by unethical individuals.”

Richmond was once the “epicentre” of birth tourism in Canada, said Griffith. Data provided by Vancouver Coastal Health shows that in the 2018 fiscal year, more than 23 per cent of all babies born at Richmond Hospital had non-resident parents. 

But the health authority said “the number of non-resident births at Richmond Hospital for the past few years is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago,” and last fiscal year, the percentage of births that were to non-resident parents was 6.9 per cent.

Griffith said it’s unclear if Trump’s positions would have an impact on birth tourism in Canada, but discussions in the U.S. would pressure Canada to “revisit the need for curbs on birth tourism.”

“Canada and the U.S., in one sense, are the preferred destinations for people who would want to achieve citizenship,” said Griffith. 

“Whether a Canadian political party will pick up the issue like the Conservatives did in 2012 remains to be seen.”

Longtime immigration consultant Peter Peng was uncertain whether there would be an “overwhelming” influx of birth tourists in Canada. “If you ask me, if we will see a big trend this time, my answer is soft Yes, not a solid one,” he said in Mandarin.

And while Richmond-based birth tourism operator Wenshi Peng said inquiries had jumped three or four times since Trump’s executive order, this had not yet been converted to an increase in clients, he said.

Peng said he didn’t think birth tourists, who pay full price for medical services, burden Canada’s health system

“For mothers who don’t have Canadian citizenships to give births here, they usually need to pay (the hospital) at least $13,000, and the price usually doubles if they run into any trouble,” Peng said in Mandarin.

“I don’t think they have taken up any local health care resources.”

Lin said that the birth tourism industry in the United States was more established than in Canada but both had appeal for someone seeking foreign citizenship for their child.

America, she said, is known for elite universities, while Canada was known for safe campus environments and its social benefits.

“Years ago, many moms who worked at high-tech firms in Taiwan used to travel to the U.S. in groups to give birth, but now they will come here instead,” said Lin. 

She said that as a mother of two, she empathized with her clients as they navigated a foreign country to give birth.

Birth tourists just want a better future for their children, she said. 

“They are under stress, and I always try my best to comfort them,” said Lin.

“For parents who choose to give birth here, they are worried that ten years later, it will be more difficult for their children to pursue studies or even immigrate (due to policy changes). The costs at that time will be way higher than $100,000, because of inflation.”

Source: As birth tourism rises again, will Trump’s citizenship moves send more Canada’s way?

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship, Vancouver Tagged with

Douglas Todd: The Wild West in B.C. housing is mostly over, but the devastation goes on

2023/11/09 Leave a comment

The naïveté of political leaders at all levels of government. Fortunately, Canada shut down its immigrant investor program but inexplicably, Quebec maintains its program despite it largely being a backdoor entry to elsewhere in Canada. David Ley’s latest book and analysis featured:

The New York Times told the world about B.C.’s unusually grim housing crisis last decade when it ran articles with headlines such as the “Housing Frenzy that Even Owners Want to End” and “The Wild West of Canadian Political Cash,” which looked at developers’ outsized influence on governments.

Those years of out-of-control, largely unregulated property investments, which caused drastic unaffordability in Metro Vancouver, are captured in bold, and sometimes painful, detail in a new book by David Ley, a University of B.C. geography professor emeritus.

His immaculately researched book, Housing Booms in Gateway Cities, looks into how the unparalleled movement of transnational capital and people into cosmopolitan Vancouver, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore and London led to skyrocketing housing prices and rents.

Ley’s extensive sections on the Vancouver region add up to a cautionary tale. He outlines the dark consequences of the blind faith that Canadian and B.C. governments put in libertarian, growth-at-any-cost ideology.

The book comes with three propositions: That financial deregulation has made housing a bigger investment than ever, that “gateway” cities are especially attractive to foreign capital and exaggerated prices, and that local wage earners are being left behind.

“Conventional housing market explanations are no longer adequate in gateway cities where ‘fundamentals’ must be rescaled to include immigration, offshore investors and the role of the global real estate industry,” Ley says

While the geographer looks at how times have changed in recent years, with housing becoming more regulated, at least in B.C., it’s crucial to follow Ley’s analysis of the political decisions that contributed to Metro Vancouver (and Victoria) ending up in this sorry mess. A recent Angus Reid poll found “three quarters of Vancouver tenants could not afford to buy, or never expected to be able to buy, a home.”

A significant part of the problem goes back at least a decade, to when the federal and B.C. governments were desperate to attract foreign capital. Politicians of all stripes were jetting off on Asia-Pacific trade missions, while Ottawa ramped up an immigration scheme that eagerly welcomed rich people — in a way that especially affected Metro Vancouver.

The business immigration program, by which the wealthiest could gain entry by “investing” in Canada, brought 200,000 people to Vancouver alone, says Ley. They had tens of billions of dollars to pump into the economy, with the heftiest portion channelled into the “asset” of housing.

Large Vancouver property developers, along with those in London and Sydney, opened scores of sales offices in East Asia to serve business-class immigrants and other affluent transnationals. The director of marketing at Vancouver-based Westbank said, “China is now a big part of this business … right now I have a rule when we talk about projects, if the Chinese market doesn’t want it, I have no interest in it.”

Royal Pacific Realty, specializing in China and Asia-Pacific investors, grew to 1,200 staff, notes Ley. And Macdonald Realty acknowledged 21 per cent of sales of Vancouver properties worth $1 to $3 million went to purchasers from mainland China. In 2016, the B.C. dwellings of investor-immigrants from China were valued on average at $3.3 million, over twice the value of Canadian-born residents.

While the federal Conservatives shut down the investor-class immigration program in 2014, the doggedly free-market B.C. Liberals, especially the minister responsible for housing, Rich Coleman, remained gung-ho on funnelling more offshore cash to the housing industry.

Coleman, Ley writes, went so far as to make “the remarkable claim” that Vancouver prices were “pretty reasonable,” even though they were far more unaffordable than even pricey London and Singapore. Coleman also refused to publish figures on foreign investment, adding he had no control over it.

Meanwhile, the B.C. Liberals chose condo marketer Bob Rennie as their chief fundraiser, welcoming tens of millions of dollars in donations from the development industry, far more than from any other sector.

According to Ley, when the NDP defeated the economically libertarian B.C. Liberals in 2016, it was largely because of housing.

The trouble is, the damage from that era carries on to this day.

As Ron Butler, the Vancouver-raised president of one of Canada’s largest mortgage companies, says: “The most important thing to understand about foreign capital is it never goes back.” No matter if the money comes from China, Iran or the Middle East, Butler says, once here “it just sloshes around,” mostly in real estate.

Seven years ago the NDP began bringing in regulations, such as the speculation and vacancy tax, to restrict housing demand, foreign and domestic. The NDP also drastically reduced the ability of developers, including from offshore, to donate to political parties.

For a few years after 2017, the NDP’s regulations helped to cool prices, says Ley, whose earlier book was titled Millionaire Migrants.

But then, in 2020, with almost bizarre effect, COVID-19 hit. With interest rates hitting rock bottom and Ottawa printing new stimulus money, Ley says house prices again heated up. The NDP’s relatively mild tax interventions to reduce investor demand weren’t strong enough. Prices are again stratospheric.

Still, in recent years, federal, provincial and municipal governments are at least starting to share some common ideas, Ley says.

They’re recognizing investors are overwhelming wage earners in the housing market. They are recognizing that “in major cities, real-estate investment has become global” and that a “freewheeling” market is vulnerable to tax fraud and money laundering. They also recognize that new housing and rental “supply” must be affordable, and that “taxation is one appropriate vehicle to manage speculative demand.”

As a result, in some ways, the libertarian Wild West housing days are over, at least in B.C., which has been more proactive in regulating housing than the Liberals in Ottawa.

Even though higher interest rates are slowing down the market, Demographia continues to rank Vancouver the most unaffordable city in North America. And with all that transnational cash still sloshing around, investors have come to own almost half of the condos in Vancouver.

Metro Vancouver’s housing market is so abnormal, so unequal, that a recent Angus Reid poll found two-thirds of regional respondents defying conventional consumer thinking and not wanting house prices to rise.

Those respondents included many homeowners who actually want prices to fall, even though it goes against their own financial self-interest. Such homeowners don’t want to see a younger generation unfairly locked out of decent shelter.

Source: Douglas Todd: The Wild West in B.C. housing is mostly over, but the devastation goes on

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Douglas Todd: Warnings of today’s foreign-student exploitation began a decade ago

2023/09/08 1 Comment

Ignored then and no sign yet of meaningful action today:

North America’s foreign-student system is no longer a humanitarian endeavour to lift up the planet’s best and brightest, and support the developing world.

Instead, it’s become a commercial competition full of marketing rhetoric, which is creating chaos in higher education.

That’s what the West’s leading experts in international education told me 10 years ago.

They were describing how governments and post-secondary institutions were adopting an increasingly cynical attitude toward foreign students.

Philip Altbach, Hanneke Teekens and Jane Knight were ahead of their time in lamenting how international education was turning into a “cash cow” for public and private universities and colleges in the U.S. and especially Canada, where there are at least eight times more per capita than in the U.S.

While the concept of international education continues to have upsides, it’s now becoming obvious to many in Canada that the foreign-student system is creating hard times, especially for students from abroad. Even the Liberal government, long in denial, is starting to admit it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government acknowledges it has pumped up the number of foreign students in Canada to, officially, 900,000. That compares to 225,000 in 2013. And experts say Ottawa’s number is a serious undercount.

The Liberals are still not necessarily admitting the obvious: That governments and post-secondary institutions are addicted to foreign-student spending and fees, which are four times higher than those of domestic students. Ten years ago, foreign students brought $8 billion into Canada, now Ottawa estimates it’s up to $30 billion.

The main problem, however, that has suddenly drawn more attention to foreign students is the out-of-control cost of housing, particularly renting.

International students, say housing analysts, are hiking competition for places to live. The average rent for a one-bedroom in Canada has jumped to a worrying $1,800, according to Rentals.ca. Vancouver is the most extreme in the country, at a devastating average of $3,013. A one-bedroom in Toronto is $2,592.

Foreign students are an expanding factor in such expensive housing — and it’s hurting the study visa holders themselves, who, according to both social media and the mainstream media, are increasingly feeling taken advantage of.

Even Canada’s housing minister, Sean Fraser, last month used the word exploited. And he finally admitted universities and colleges are bringing in far more students than they could possibly provide housing for.

That was before Benjamin Tal, chief economist for the CIBC Capital Markets, told Liberal cabinet ministers the government is dangerously undercounting the number of temporary residents, particularly foreign students, in Canada.

While the government, and Statistics Canada, state there are more than one million non-permanent residents in Canada, Tal’s calculations show there are at least one million more missing from the count. “Housing demand is stronger than what official numbers are telling you and that’s why we’re approaching a zero vacancy rate.”

The government’s calculations, Tal said, have ignored that many foreign workers and students don’t leave the country when their visas expire. They stay on in hopes of applying to become immigrants. Census methods for surveying foreign students, he added, are misleading.

Giacomo Ladas of Rentals.ca says, “International students do add pressure to the rental market,” even while he emphasized it’s not their fault.

“There’s such a supply and demand issue in the rental market right now and they add to this imbalance. The study permits for international students have increased by 75 per cent in the last five years. So, that’s a huge influx of people coming in and nowhere to put them.”

Delegates at a recent Union of B.C. Municipalities’ housing summit heard how rapidly foreign students and other non-permanent residents are adding to demand for housing.

The number of non-permanent residents and newcomers to Metro Vancouver has in five years almost doubled, delegates were told. Foreign students and other recent arrivals own eight per cent of all homes in Metro Vancouver, and account for 25 per cent of renters.

Canada’s housing minister received a lot of media attention in August when he responded to a reporter’s direct question by saying he wouldn’t rule out a cap on international students.

But since then both he and Immigration Minister Marc Miller have backtracked, and Trudeau has warned not to “blame” foreign students.

Miller admitted Canada’s “very lucrative” foreign student system “comes with some perverse effects, some fraud in the system, some people taking advantage of what is seen to be a backdoor entry into Canada.”

Whatever the Liberal cabinet is starting to admit in the past month, however, the public would be naive to expect any real reforms.

In addition to anxiety over the housing crisis, many economists also worry international students are being taken advantage of by employers to keep wages down. An earlier StatCan study showed up to one out of three foreign students aren’t attending school.

While some representatives of universities and college, especially private ones, are trying to shut down debate by accusing critics of blaming study visa holders for high housing costs and low wages, the reality is those raising concerns can be seen as standing up for people on study visas.

Many people are aware of a high suicide rate among international students, including alarms raised by funeral homes. The largest cohort of foreign students, by far, now comes from India, and it is often South Asian voices in Canada who are pointing to their victimization, including employer abuse and sexual harassment by landlords.

And Vancouver immigration lawyers such as Richard Kurland and George Lee add the federal government’s decision to allow unlimited international students is setting up many for future immigration disappointment.

Canada is building far too big a pool of people who will be highly qualified for permanent resident status, they say. Not everyone can win the immigration points-system competition, which has an annual cutoff.

The trouble is a lot of vested interests are eager for the foreign-student gravy train to keep chugging along, regardless of the unintended suffering it causes — including for students desperate for a place to live.

Source: Douglas Todd: Warnings of today’s foreign-student exploitation began a decade ago

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TransLink braces to handle increasing immigration among service pressures 

2023/03/27 Leave a comment

A useful reminder of the impact of increased immigration on infrastructure:

The capacity of TransLink’s expansion plans might be tested sooner than expected by Canada’s higher targets for immigration, according to a new report for the transit authority’s mayors council.

TransLink is estimating Metro Vancouver could see up to 50,000 new immigrants per year coming to the region, based on Canada’s targets for 500,000 new residents per year by 2025, compared with 36,000 per year between 2017 and 2021, according to the transit agency’s report.

And trends for the settlement of new immigrants show they’re landing mostly in rapidly growing communities south of the Fraser River that are on frequently served transit lines.

However, those sections of TransLink’s network are already struggling with overcrowding. Whereas ridership systemwide has only recovered to 84 per cent of levels experienced in 2019, ridership in areas south of the Fraser has surpassed pre-COVID-19 levels.

And if service can’t be expanded to meet that growth, residents in the region who tend to rely more on transit to start with will experience more overcrowding and frequent pass-ups at bus stops than they do now, according to the report, an update on system pressures received by TransLink’s mayors council on Friday.

“What changes, it just enhances the urgency to be moving forward on expansion, particularly south of the Fraser where our ridership is higher than it was in 2019,” said Sarah Ross, TransLink’s vice-president of planning and policy.

Ross said the updated figures don’t represent a big departure from expectations in TransLink’s Transport 2050 plan, with its immediate 10-year, $20 billion capital plan for expansion.

“This is not us saying we need to change our 10-year priorities’ plan, not at all,” Ross said.

However, the need to stay focused on the expansion plan has been telegraphed by TransLink’s experience with service south of the Fraser. In the last year, TransLink has reallocated service, trimming routes in slower-growing communities in the region to add 12 per cent to routes south of the Fraser.

“Every time we put out more service it’s taken up right away,” Ross said.

Implementing the R6 RapidBus service on Scott Road is one of the top priorities in that 10-year capital plan, but the update report comes at a time TransLink is trying to renew discussions with the province and federal government on how to pay for it.

TransLink’s mayors council meeting Friday was the same meeting at which chairman Brad West, mayor of Port Coquitlam, acknowledged receipt of the province’s $479 million emergency contribution to backstop the agency’s pandemic-driven shortfalls.

“It was important because the alternative to the province stepping-up was significant service reductions to our region, increased congestion and poor outcomes,” West said in his report to the meeting.

TransLink’s challenge will be to lobby Ottawa, in addition to Victoria, on supporting TransLink’s efforts to create a more sustainable funding model that doesn’t rely so heavily on regional fuel taxes that are due to decline as Lower Mainland drivers also adopt electric vehicles at a faster rate.

“We’ve talked at length about the funding model that TransLink is currently operating under being insufficient for the job ahead and in many ways has gotten us to where we are now,” West said.

Source: TransLink braces to handle increasing immigration among service pressures 

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Here’s why Vancouver’s first baby of 2023 won’t be in Canada for long [birth tourism]

2023/01/10 Leave a comment

Classic birth tourism example. The couple came to Canada because “we chose Canada because the Canadian passport is better.” They couple had enough money to travel to Canada and pay the non-resident fees but now given complications and the deteriorating economic situation in Egypt are encountering financial hardships (unlike more wealthy women who come to Canada to give birth and can afford birth tourism residences).

The other point of note is the naiveté of the couple in being so frank about their reasons for coming to Vancouver, and it is rare to have those coming for birth tourism to be interviewed and quoted. The reporter lack of awareness of the citizenship aspects and related issues is also of note:

Baby girl Hana Amr Fouad was born at 2:54 a.m. on January 1, 2023, in Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital, weighing in at nine pounds 1.5 ounces. But circumstances surrounding her birth are not typical of a new year’s baby.

Parents Salma Gasser and Amr Fouad flew to Vancouver from Cairo, Egypt “to give the baby this opportunity,” says her father.

They carefully considered the place of Hana’s birth and secured visas for both the U.S. and Canada but ultimately, “we chose Canada because the Canadian passport is better,” explains Fouad. However, things haven’t quite gone to plan.

For starters, baby Hana was over a week late.

Gasser, whose brother lives in Vancouver, arrived in Canada two months ago and Fouad arrived just under a month ago. This is the pair’s first time in Canada.

Hana’s due date was Dec. 17 and the couple pre-paid for a natural birth but in the end, Gasser needed a C-section.

Mother and baby are resting at home with the midwife but the delay and changed birth plan have caused complications for the family.

Fouad says that since arriving in Canada, Egypt has imposed strict limits on credit cards and the value of the Egyptian pound has been steadily depreciating, both of which are putting unanticipated financial strain on the couple. The hospital bill for a C-section is also higher than for a natural birth so the couple is facing an unexpectedly higher cost for Hana’s birth. 

“We are still trying to figure it out,” says Fouad.

The family is anxiously awaiting the birth certificate for baby Hana – which can take up to six weeks to be issued – and then plan to secure a Canadian passport for their daughter. They will be returning home to Egypt but have plans of coming back to B.C. in the future.

“We hear Vancouver is much nicer in the summer,” he says.

Source: Here’s why Vancouver’s first baby of 2023 won’t be in Canada for long

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

China operating ‘police’ station out of Vancouver, civil rights group alleges

2022/12/07 Leave a comment

More allegations:

A Spanish civil rights group says it has uncovered two new secret “police” stations being operated in Canada, including one in Vancouver.

Safeguard Defenders has published a report revealing the existence of 48 Chinese “police service stations” being operated overseas, in addition to the 54 stations the group initially reported on in September.

The not-for-profit human rights group has documented a total of 102 stations in 53 countries.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Vancouver election chief challenges use of Chinese and Persian names on ballots

2022/09/16 Leave a comment

Of note. Tend to think better to only have Latin characters only for consistency and level playing field. Names in any case largely indicate ethnic ancestry:

Vancouver’s chief election officer has filed a court application seeking to declare that 15 candidates in upcoming municipal votes are not entitled to have their names on the ballot papers using Chinese, Persian or other non-Latin characters.

Rosemary Hagiwara filed the application to provincial court on Tuesday, naming respondents who include the Non-Partisan Association’s mayoral candidate Fred Harding, incumbent NPA councillor Melissa De Genova, and veteran Vision Vancouver school board trustee Allan Wong.

The application said all of the respondents submitted their “usual name” to be used on the Oct. 15 ballot papers in both Latin characters and either Chinese or Persian.

Ten are from the NPA, two from Vision Vancouver, and one each from Forward Together and COPE.

Hagiwara argued that none of the respondents who have previously stood for municipal elections used non-Latin versions of their names in the earlier nomination papers.

The matter is set to be heard by the provincial court in Robson Square on Thursday morning.

Harding said in an interview his Chinese name wasn’t something “plucked out of a hat.”

He said he has had a Chinese name for many years because half of his family on his wife’s side are Chinese.

“So telling me that this is not my usual name, you can understand this is like, ‘You really don’t know me,'” said Harding.

Hagiwara’s affidavit said that when Harding initially submitted his nomination on Sept. 6, he did not include Chinese characters in his usual name, but three days later he revised his nomination to add them.

She also said Harding did not include Chinese characters when he ran for mayor in 2018.

Harding said that although the NPA had access to lawyers, none could respond to the matter by Thursday morning.

Vision Vancouver said in a statement that Wong and council candidate Honieh Barzegar were dismayed by the possibility that their “unique and usual names” printed in non-Latin characters would be removed from ballot papers.

But the party also accused other candidates of using “cultural appropriation” by adopting Chinese names by which they are not commonly known, to seek an unfair advantage at the polls.

COPE school board candidate Suzie Mah said in a statement she felt “shock and disbelief” at being included among the respondents because her Chinese name was chosen by her parents and is part of her identity.

“The reason for using my Chinese name as well as my English name on the ballot is important to me. This is not about gaining extra votes with the Chinese community,” said Mah, adding she was not someone who sought to “make up a Chinese name” to use in the election.

Mah said in an interview her Chinese name was well-known among the Chinese-speaking community.

“I think that in the future if we want people to run for office and we want people to be part of democracy, voting has to be accessible. When you put in another barrier for people to take to run for office, it is very disturbing,” said Mah.

She said time was too short for her to seek legal advice before the hearing.

Hagiwara said in her affidavit that she is not aware of any candidate seeking to use non-Latin characters on ballot papers before 2014.

Only one candidate in each of the 2014 and 2018 polls had used non-Latin characters on the ballot, she said.

Source: Vancouver election chief challenges use of Chinese and Persian names on ballots

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Douglas Todd: How does Indigenous reconciliation square with big business?

2022/09/08 Leave a comment

Understandable on the one hand that residents are critical of the lack of consultation but ironic that settlers did not consult Indigenous communities when establishing farms and cities:
Leaders of the 4,000-member Squamish Nation, who are behind one of the most dense property developments in Canadian history, have signed an agreement with Vancouver councillors saying one of the five aims of its 11-tower Senakw project is to “promote further reconciliation between the Nation and the City.”
But to what extent will this Indigenous-controlled multi-billion-dollar skyscraper project, which is unprecedented in North America, actually contribute to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples?

Source: Douglas Todd: How does Indigenous reconciliation square with big business?

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Tsek’ene, Farsi, Punjabi, Tagalog: The push to diversify languages in schools [Vancouver and the lower mainland]

2022/06/06 Leave a comment

Of note. Language demands change with time. When I was in high school in the 1970s, Latin was still offered and Russian was an option. Believe Latin classes ended sometime in the 1980s and of course Chinese has far eclipsed the former need for Russian (influenced by the Cold War).

Our kids went to Farsi Saturday morning classes when they were young, offered by the Ottawa Board of Education.

How this interest in “heritage” languages plays out with respect to second official language instruction remains to be seen:

Nine-year-old Armiti Atayi takes private Farsi classes, but would rather learn the language at her West Vancouver public school in a classroom with all her friends — something that may be possible one day, if the Education Ministry approves a new proposed Farsi curriculum.

“So when I go back for a vacation to Iran, I can read signs and read books and watch Persian TV, and cartoons,” said the Grade 3 Westcot Elementary student.

Her father, Omid Atayi, argued it is “long overdue” for Farsi to be offered in public schools given B.C.’s fast-growing Persian community.

“That would be a dream come true,” Atayi said. “We want our kids to be close to our culture, so establishing meaningful connection through language. … So they can read books, read poems, and write their own name. And a good example would be when they travelled back home (to Iran), they can communicate in an effective way with their relatives, or children their own age.”

If the Education Ministry accepts the new proposed Farsi curriculum developed and approved last month by the Coquitlam school board, it will become the ninth language, in addition to English and French, for which the province has official course guidelines. The others are French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, Spanish and American Sign Language.

The province also has curriculum for 18 First Nations languages, and the Education Ministry said in an email that more are “in development.”

Three additional languages are offered in a tiny number of districts using “locally developed,” as opposed to ministry-approved, curriculum, such Russian in Prince George and the Comox Valley, Arabic in Victoria, and Croatian in Burnaby, although there is not always enough demand to run these courses every year.

Most of B.C.’s approved languages, with the exception of English, French and Spanish, are taught in only a small number of schools, where there is sufficient interest from students and enough qualified teachers.

During this 2021-22 school year, just 34,000 students took a secondary language that wasn’t English or French or who weren’t involved in an immersion programs, according to Education Ministry data provided to Postmedia. That is less than 10 per cent of B.C.’s 564,000 elementary and secondary students.

In B.C., all students must take a second language in Grades 5 to 8, unless they have so-called diverse needs, receive English-as-a-second-language services, or are in an immersion program. French is the default language if a district offers no alternatives, the ministry says. Second languages in high school are optional.

Nearly one third of B.C.’s 60 school districts didn’t offer a secondary language course beyond English or French in the 2021-22 calendar year. However, the ministry says courses run by districts fluctuate year by year based on enrolment.

The Vancouver school board, for example, ran second language instruction in French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese and Italian this year, and in past years has also offered Korean, German, Russian and Punjabi. The VSB also operates French and Mandarin immersion programs.

After French, Spanish was the most popular secondary language, with more than 20,000 students enrolled in two thirds of boards across B.C. Punjabi as a second language, by comparison, was offered in just six districts and had just 2,125 students taking it this year.

About 11 of the 18 Indigenous languages were taught this year to a total of 1,515 students in a handful of schools, the vast majority of them in the north, on Vancouver Island or in the Interior. The most common were 233 students taking Kwak’wala in the Campbell River and Vancouver Island North districts, and 219 students studying Secwepemctsin in the Cariboo-Chilcotin and Kamloops-Thompson districts.

Chilliwack appears to the closest city to Metro Vancouver to offer an Indigenous language, with 106 students studying Halq’eméylem this year. The Vancouver school board said in an email, though, that it is working with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations with an aim to one day offer programs in the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Skwxwú7mesh languages.

Statistics Canada says B.C. has the largest number of Indigenous languages, but they are spoken by an increasingly small number of people.

“I would love to see the province provide more support towards the revitalization of Indigenous languages within British Columbia, because it is the province that has the highest number of varied Indigenous languages and they are at risk,” said Rome Lavrencic, a New Westminster French teacher who has been on a B.C. Teachers’ Federation languages committee for 16 years.

Lavrencic said he recently met with officials from various universities and colleges who indicated there is renewed interest from students to learn Indigenous languages, but the challenge at the post-secondary level is the same in high schools: The classrooms need to be full, or it is not financially feasible to run the courses.

Another challenge to offer these programs is finding enough books and other teaching resources. While the federal government provides extra resources for French courses, Lavrencic said, “the minority languages, like Japanese, German, Mandarin and Punjabi, don’t get as much in terms of recognition and funding.”

Despite those shortcomings, B.C. should offer even more languages in its schools, such as Tagalog from the Philippines, argued Lavrencic, president of the BCTF’s Association of Teachers of Modern Languages.

“There’s so many different benefits from learning a foreign language,” added Wendy Yamazaki, a Japanese teacher in Delta who is treasurer of the BCTF language committee. “It just gives you that global perspective, that understanding of cultures and understanding of other people in different areas.”

In response to questions about whether B.C. will introduce more languages in public schools, the ministry said it is up to teachers and community groups to first develop new language curriculums that they would like to see taught. It is also up to districts to recruit the required teachers, but the ministry says it does provide some assistance.

Twelve years ago, Coquitlam started a Mandarin immersion program. Abby Chow was part of that inaugural group of students, and is now in it first graduating class.

Although her parents do not speak Mandarin, the Grade 12 student at Gleneagle Secondary School leaves the public school system able to speak it fluently.

“It will open a lot of doors if I want to study an international language or travel in Asia,” said Chow, who will attend the University of B.C. next year to study science and play on the golf team. “I’m super grateful.”

Coquitlam is one of a very small number of B.C. districts that offers Mandarin immersion and the program often has a waiting list, said Sophie Bergeron, Coquitlam’s language and culture coordinator.

“Mostly due to a shortage of teachers, we cannot expand our program, even though we have more demand than we have space for students,” she said, adding the same is true for its French immersion classes.

Her district became the first in B.C. to approve the new Farsi curriculum, which was developed by teachers from Coquitlam and Surrey, with help from a Simon Fraser University professor. It is now under review by the province, which will decide later this year whether it meets all requirements to become an authorized language course, the ministry’s email said.

Bergeron said Coquitlam doesn’t plan to offer Farsi courses in the near future, mainly because of a shortage of Persian teachers and timetable challenges. However, the district sponsored the curriculum in the hope that Farsi could one day be added to the list of languages that Grade 11 and 12 students can “challenge,” meaning if they speak the language fluently, they can write an exam and earn a high school credit.

“Hopefully a challenge exam will be developed so those students will at least have one way of having their (Farsi) language recognized for credits,” Bergeron said. “Maybe another district would be willing to go” with classes.

And that’s the exact outcome hoped for by Amir Bajehkian, who founded Farsi dar B.C. five years ago to lobby for his native language to be taught in schools. While he is grateful that Coquitlam sponsored the curriculum, he hopes classes will be offered on the North Shore, where B.C.’s largest Persian community lives.

“Our main focus is on North Vancouver and West Vancouver school districts,” he said, adding one of the key reasons is the number of readily available Farsi-speaking teachers there.

Bajehkian has spoken with the districts, and has asked them to consider offering Farsi courses in Handsworth and Carson Graham in North Vancouver, and West Vancouver Secondary and Sentinel in West Vancouver.

“I think this is a great move in the right direction,” said North Vancouver’s assistant superintendent, Chris Atkinson. “I think it’s important for students to see themselves represented in the curriculum. … It helps build a diverse culture in the schools.”

While he said Handsworth and Carson both have large Persian student populations, he cautioned there is a lot that needs to happen before students will be sitting in a Farsi classroom. Assuming the ministry approves the curriculum, high school principals must then decide if they have enough teachers and students, and then must find room in their timetables.

The earliest Farsi could be offered is September 2023, Atkinson said.

The West Vancouver district said it would examine the Farsi proposal in the coming year.

Bajehkian estimates there are as many as 90,000 Iranians and up to 30,000 Afghans in the Lower Mainland, and said those numbers are growing. And he is proud that the two communities came together to create and lobby for this curriculum.

“Having the Farsi speaking community, Iranians and Afghans, in Canada, and B.C. particularly, we’re getting to a point that we’re becoming more established. And, in my opinion, now is the time to preserve and protect our language for our kids and share it with our neighbours,” he said.

Source: Tsek’ene, Farsi, Punjabi, Tagalog: The push to diversify languages in schools 

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