Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2026/02/13 Leave a comment
Money quote:
…“But why would anyone who doesn’t have to, run the risk of humiliation in their own country by U.S. Department of Homeland Security staff who seem only slightly more house-trained than their colleagues in Immigration and Customs Enforcement?”
Source: John Ivison: America appears to be slamming its doors on Canadian professionals with work visas
2026/02/13 Leave a comment
No issue with revocation for fraud and misrepresentation but with the Trump administration unlikely to stop there:
“We maintain a zero-tolerance policy towards fraud in the naturalization process and will pursue denaturalization proceedings for any individual who lied or misrepresented themselves,” he said. “We will continue to relentlessly pursue those undermining the integrity of America’s immigration system and work alongside the Department of Justice to ensure that only those who meet citizenship standards retain the privilege of U.S. citizenship.”
Trump administration officials are looking for shortcuts to speed up the process, the two people familiar with the plans said. USCIS officials have concluded that dedicating staff members, either by sending experts or by training them across the agency’s 80-plus field offices nationwide, would be more effective in rooting out more cases than the previous Trump effort, headquartered in a warehouse in Pasadena, California, they said.
The Justice Department has already told attorneys to focus on denaturalization cases, and it has offered possible case examples, from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have engaged in war crimes or torture to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government.
There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other cases … that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
Often the cases go on beyond a presidential administration. According to Justice Department figures, the Trump administration won 86 cases during Trump’s first term. During the Biden administration, 54 cases were won….
Source: Trump administration working to expand effort to strip citizenship from foreign-born Americans
2026/02/13 2 Comments
Sigh… Canada has relatively accessible citizenship. Voting rights are an essential aspect and this measure, as in the case when the federal liberals allowed this, further diminish citizenship:
Over the weekend, the Ontario Liberals released the long-awaited rules for the party’s leadership race such as fundraising targets and the deadline to register as a member to vote.
But unlike the federal Liberals’ leadership election, no changes were made to who could cast a ballot, meaning non-citizens and people in Canada on student or work visas are all eligible, per the party’s constitution.
The 2024 public inquiry into foreign election interference said China, one of three countries flagged for attempting to interfere in Canada elections, uses international students, as well as diplomatic missions, community organizations and private individuals, to “carry out its transnational repression activities.”
The inquiry said China targets members of Chinese Canadian diaspora communities for the “purposes of repression, influence and forced return of targeted individuals” to its territory.
Michelle Tessier, who served as Deputy Director of Operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from 2018 to 2023, said candidate selection and leadership contests were identified during the inquiry as particularly vulnerable points in the political system.
“I do think it’s concerning,” Tessier said of parties continuing to allow non-citizens to vote in internal leadership races.
She pointed to the inquiry’s findings around the difficulty of verifying residency and the increased risks associated with transnational repression, where foreign nationals may face coercion or threats from hostile state actors.
“In terms of the vulnerability around being able to confirm somebody’s residence, the risk of foreign nationals being subject to transnational repression, which is, you know, the coercion or threats, to have them to vote a certain way. Now, granted that can happen to Canadians citizens as well who may have family overseas. (…) but it does increase the vulnerability,” she said.
“Given that it was indicated in the recommendations of the commission, it would certainly be encouraging to see steps being taken to follow those recommendations,” she added….
2026/02/13 Leave a comment
While I remain critical of the role of these envoys and believe that Amira Elghawaby’s activist background was not helpful compared to the more professional approach of Deborah Lyons (activists obviously disagree), this criticism is over the top. And not even mentioning her name?
And greater equity, not just equality, should be the objective, but without some of the excesses of previous and current policies:
Mercifully and at long last, the corrosive movement of DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity) seems to be dying in Canadian public life.
Last week, the federal government announced the elimination of the Special Representative for Combatting Islamophobia, along with the federal office for Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, which had sat vacant since its last special envoy, Deborah Lyons, left the role last July. Both positions are to be replaced by a new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion.
To be clear, it is more likely than not that the new advisory council becomes an unproductive mess, and the government is clearly not doing enough to combat antisemitism in particular. Ottawa has never lacked for panels that generate language rather than outcomes. Still, despite that likelihood, there are reasons for optimism.
The first is that the former Special Representative for Combatting Islamophobia had become emblematic of the Liberal government’s equivocal moral relativism when it came to tackling the surge in antisemitic hate post-October 7th. Rather than acknowledge that reality, the Trudeau government appointed a provocateur who consistently downplayed antisemitic incidents, advocated for harsher criticism by the government against Jewish organizations, and advocated for radical and corrosive “anti-Palestinian racism” training….
She was a divisive and corrosive figure whom Canadian taxpayers should never have been footing the bill for.
The second reason for optimism lies in the government’s quiet replacement of the term “equity” in its new advisory council with the older, more conventional “equality.”
Equity is not an extension of equality, but rather a perversion of it.
For centuries, democratic and pluralistic societies moved haltingly toward a simple moral standard. That people should be judged as individuals. The law should be blind to race, religion, and background. Citizens should rise or fall based on the content of their character rather than the circumstances of their birth.
Equity inverted that standard.
Under equity, individuals were reclassified as representatives of groups. Moral judgment shifted from conduct to identity. Group grievance replaced personal responsibility. Group blame replaced individual guilt. The very idea of a shared civic identity gave way to a system of competing moral claims, mediated by mobs of activists, and increasingly, by the state.
The Islamophobia file crystallized this inversion. One form of prejudice was elevated into a bespoke federal portfolio, while others were absorbed into broader categories or left to existing law. The distinction was never coherently justified. Its effect was to teach Canadians that equality before the law was no longer the governing principle.1
The removal of the Islamophobia envoy matters because it signals a retreat from that model, and the elimination of one of the most prominent and corrosive examples of moral relativism of the Trudeau era.
The new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion may disappoint. It may produce vague language, cautious recommendations, or even foster more division. But the symbolic shift away from equity, and away from offices designed to institutionalize group grievance, still matters.
DIE is ending because it reversed the moral logic of liberal democracy and, in so doing, exhausted its credibility.
Bad ideas rarely die the public death they deserve. They simply stop being defended, then stop being funded, then stop being mentioned.
That, for now, is progress.
2026/02/12 2 Comments
Yet another commentary arguing for keeping the envoys. Still remain to be convinced that envoys will be any more effective than the council, apart from providing some comfort to affected groups:
…Why not keep these envoys and have them report to the council?
Granted, the status quo wasn’t working. And it’s fair to question why a government assigns these roles to only specific groups. Why not for Black people – who are the most targeted for hate crimes in Canada – or Indigenous people, or LGBTQ+ folks?
But the way hatred aimed at Jews is being accepted, mainstreamed or shrugged off these days, all around the world, is astounding.
Canadians are fortunate to have a government that cares enough about discrimination to create this council. But this is crisis time for the Jewish and Muslim communities. Specially designed roles are required, with strong people in them willing to take on all that hate; I don’t know how Ms. Lyons did it, or how Ms. Elghawaby has been doing it. Kudos to them both, and to Mr. Cotler.
It is imperative that the voices representing these communities do not get drowned out, watered down, or disqualified in a council dealing with what shouldn’t be, but sadly and certainly at times will be, opposing concerns.
Source: Now is a bad time for Canada to ditch its antisemitism and Islamophobia envoys
Former Minister and envoy Cotler:
…Mr. Cotler, founder and international chair of the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights non-profit, and Canada’s first antisemitism envoy between 2020 and 2023, said the government’s decision to abolish his former post was “however well intentioned …. uninformed, ill-advised and prejudicial, both to its mandates of preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism.”
He said the decision had been made “precisely at a time when we are witnessing an unprecedented global explosion of antisemitism, including here in Canada, and rising levels of Holocaust denial, distortion, minimization and inversion.”
Mr. Cotler said in a statement that the new advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion, while valuable, will be no replacement for the envoy role.
“From my experience, such a council, while necessary to combat all forms of hate, tends to marginalize or erase the singularity of anti-Jewish hatred, its globality, and its descent into standing threats of intimidation, harassment, violence and even terrorism,” he said. “This decision will end up, however inadvertently, making Jews in Canada less safe, and feeling less safe.”
The new advisory council will be overseen by Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller, and it is not known if Ms. Elghawaby, the Islamophobia envoy who still had several months left on her term, will be a member. …
Source: Former antisemitism envoy warns abolition of the post could make Canadian Jews less safe
From former head of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation:
…This is not about privileging one community over another. It is about protecting the integrity of Canada’s human rights framework. Antisemitism remains the oldest and most persistent hatred in Western history. Islamophobia has intensified in recent decades and has proved deadly in Canada. Treating these realities as interchangeable risks responding inadequately to both.
Unity is not built by flattening differences or avoiding difficult truths. It is built through recognition, accountability and trust. Communities facing rising hatred are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for visible leadership, institutional commitment and meaningful consultation. When decisions affecting them are made without that engagement, trust erodes — and trust is far harder to rebuild than institutions.
Canada does not face a choice between unity and effectiveness. It can pursue both. But doing so requires clarity, not consolidation. Dedicated offices with clear mandates, stable funding and public accountability should be strengthened, not dissolved. Advisory bodies should support this work, not replace it.
As we remember the victims of the Quebec City mosque attack and reflect on the enduring lessons of the Holocaust, the minister of Canadian Identity and Culture should reconsider this decision. Combating hatred is not a matter of administrative efficiency. One size does not fit all.
Source: Opinion: Let’s not dilute antisemitism and Islamophobia
2026/02/11 Leave a comment
Good long read from former Quebec official on the genesis of two-step immigration. Conclusion excerpt:
….Il a été durable en dépit de l’évolution du système d’immigration canadien depuis sa signature, largement grâce aux mécanismes intergouvernementaux de gestion prévus dans les annexes.
Cela étant dit, cette gestion concertée a donné lieu vers 2005 à l’abandon, sans amendement, par les deux gouvernements, d’un article qui — on s’en rend compte aujourd’hui — était la clé de voûte de notre système traditionnel d’immigration. Il s’agit de l’article 9 : « Le Canada et le Québec reconnaissent que les demandes de droit d’établissement doivent normalement être déposées et étudiées à l’étranger. »
L’abandon de cette règle a ouvert la porte à la réception des demandes d’immigration permanente par des personnes déjà sur le territoire avec un statut temporaire. Peu de temps après, le Canada a créé son Programme de la catégorie de l’expérience canadienne (CEC – 2008) et le Québec son Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ – 2010).
Aucun des deux gouvernements n’a pensé aux conséquences de cette décision sur la planification de l’immigration. Si les personnes sélectionnées pour la résidence permanente venaient de l’étranger, planifier les seuils d’immigration permanente suffisait pour prévoir et réguler le nombre d’arrivées et le nombre de personnes qui s’établiraient.
À l’inverse, si les personnes à statut temporaire devaient quitter le pays pour faire une demande d’immigration permanente, il n’était pas nécessaire d’en fixer le nombre. Avec l’octroi de la résidence permanente à des personnes déjà sur le territoire, la planification de l’immigration permanente s’éloignait de plus en plus des arrivées.
Le nombre d’immigrants temporaires a donc grimpé de manière exponentielle dans les dix dernières années, sans que les niveaux planifiés d’immigration permanente suivent le rythme.
Le résultat est un bassin phénoménal de personnes au Québec, comme au Canada, qui s’attendent à pouvoir obtenir la résidence permanence. La crise du PEQ n’en est qu’un exemple particulier.
C’était l’intention des négociateurs de l’Accord Canada-Québec de reconnaître au Québec le contrôle sur l’ensemble de l’immigration sur son territoire, incluant l’immigration temporaire, à l’unique exception des demandeurs d’asile. Aujourd’hui, il y a des avis divergents sur la responsabilité du Québec sur un ensemble important de permis de travail, ce qui fait en sorte que le Québec ne donne pas son consentement à ce pan d’immigration temporaire.
Le système actuel d’immigration à multiples étapes a grandement amplifié le nombre de dédoublements, de chevauchements et de frais auxquels font face les personnes qui souhaitent venir au Québec pour étudier, travailler, et s’établir. Il crée également de la précarité et de la vulnérabilité. L’Accord offre la possibilité de mieux partager les responsabilités entre les deux États pour réduire ces inconvénients et diminuer les coûts.
En cette année électorale, il est évident que tous les partis politiques seront appelés à se positionner sur le dossier complexe de l’immigration. Espérons qu’ils sauront tirer pleinement avantage de l’Accord signé il y a 35 ans afin de protéger la spécificité de la nation québécoise.
Source: Retour sur l’esprit de l’Accord Canada-Québec relatif à l’immigration pour ses 35 ans
…. It has been sustainable despite the evolution of the Canadian immigration system since its signing, largely thanks to the intergovernmental management mechanisms provided for in the annexes.
That being said, this concerted management led around 2005 to the abandonment, without amendment, by the two governments, of an article that – we realize today – was the cornerstone of our traditional immigration system. This is Article 9: “Canada and Quebec recognize that applications for the right of establishment must normally be filed and studied abroad. ”
The abandonment of this rule opened the door to the receipt of applications for permanent immigration by people already in the territory with temporary status. Shortly after, Canada created its Canadian Experience Category Program (CEC – 2008) and Quebec its Quebec Experience Program (QEP – 2010).
Neither government has thought about the consequences of this decision on immigration planning. If the people selected for permanent residence came from abroad, planning permanent immigration thresholds was enough to predict and regulate the number of arrivals and the number of people who would settle.
Conversely, if people with temporary status had to leave the country to apply for permanent immigration, it was not necessary to set the number. With the granting of permanent residence to people already in the territory, the planning of permanent immigration was increasingly far away from arrivals.
The number of temporary immigrants has therefore risen exponentially in the last ten years, without the planned levels of permanent immigration following the pace.
The result is a phenomenal pool of people in Quebec, as in Canada, who expect to be able to obtain permanent residence. The PEQ crisis is just one particular example of this.
It was the intention of the negotiators of the Canada-Quebec Agreement to recognize Quebec’s control over all immigration on its territory, including temporary immigration, with the sole exception of asylum seekers. Today, there are divergent opinions on Quebec’s responsibility for a large set of work permits, which means that Quebec does not give its consent to this part of temporary immigration.
The current system of multi-stage immigration has greatly amplified the number of duplications, overlaps and fees faced by people who wish to come to Quebec to study, work, and settle. It also creates precariousness and vulnerability. The Agreement offers the possibility of better sharing of responsibilities between the two States to reduce these inconveniences and lower costs.
In this election year, it is obvious that all political parties will be called upon to position themselves on the complex issue of immigration. Let’s hope that they will be able to take full advantage of the Agreement signed 35 years ago to protect the specificity of the Quebec nation.
2026/02/11 2 Comments
Not sure whether this would withstand a Charter challenge but clever move by the Conservatives to choose this issue which most Canadians, immigrants and non-immigrants, would likely support:
The Conservatives are planning to introduce a motion today to bar non-citizens convicted of serious crimes from making refugee claims.
The motion also calls on the government to prevent asylum claims from people whose cases are still working their way through the courts.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said on social media Monday non-citizens who commit serious crimes “must be forced to leave our country.”
The Conservative motion cites an increase in extortion cases and what they call lax bail laws as reasons for the motion.
British Columbia Premier David Eby and several big city mayors have also pushed Ottawa to close what they call loopholes around asylum claims following a significant rise in extortion violence in his province and many others.
Delegates at the recent Conservative party convention in Calgary called for similar changes to the immigration and justice systems when they voted in favour of a policy proposal saying Canadian taxpayers should not pay for the “rehabilitation of foreign nationals.”
Source: Conservatives to propose barring non-citizens convicted of crimes from making refugee claims
2026/02/10 Leave a comment
As I wrote some four years ago, don’t believe these envoys facilitate integration and greater mutual understanding as they tend to be advocates for particular group: Racism and the need for a national integration commission:
…In practical terms, Ottawa’s legitimacy on this issue will now depend on what happens next.
Who will sit on the new council? Will Muslim and Jewish leaders be adequately represented? Will the council have independence and influence? Will its recommendations shape legislation, policing, education, and online regulation? Will ministers remain directly accessible to affected communities?
Racism and religious discrimination are not interchangeable phenomena. Antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, and anti-Indigenous racism each have distinct histories and dynamics. Treating them as generic “hate” risks flattening those differences. At the same time, siloed responses can obscure shared structural causes such as economic precarity, digital radicalization, and political scapegoating.
The government must now demonstrate — through appointments, funding, transparency, and sustained engagement — that it is not retreating from the fight against Islamophobia and antisemitism, but reorganizing it in good faith.
Community organizations are right to remain vigilant. Monitoring, advocacy, and constructive pressure are not signs of disloyalty. They are essential features of democratic accountability.
This moment should not be framed as a simple victory or betrayal. It is better understood as a test.
A test of whether Ottawa can move from symbolic politics to durable partnerships. A test of whether institutional reform will deepen or dilute accountability. And a test of whether trust — so painstakingly built over years — will be reinforced or quietly eroded.
The answer will not be found in press releases. It will be found in practice.
Source: Opinion | Two major cuts by Carney are testing the limits of community trust
2026/02/10 Leave a comment
.To watch:
..…The question is: how is the Ford Government going to approach all of this?
As near as I can tell, it has four options.It can take stock of the full variety of pathways and adjudication of merit and say “eh, this is all too complicated/post-secondary institutes are doing a decent job”. It should go without saying that this is almost certainly the least likely outcome.
It can leave contextualized admissions alone but try to limit the practice of special pathways for Indigenous, racialized or otherwise underserved students. That is, it might give a pass to programs where 10-20% of places are reserved for certain underserved groups, but at the same time say “75% in reserved pathways (as TMU proposes) is too much”. I suspect this is the likeliest option.
It can leave contextualized admissions alone but eliminate pathways entirely. This would mean eliminating things like the U of T’s Indigenous Student Application Program and many other programs like it. My read of Conservatives’ views on this is that they tend to be warier of Indigeneity initiatives than they are of critiquing EDI as a whole, seeing more justice in the claims advanced by Indigenous communities than they do for Black ones (for instance). I think this is less likely than option 2 but would not rule it out.
It could seek to eliminate both pathways and contextualized admissions and tell institutions that the only thing they should use is high school grades.
That last one might sound radical, but pay attention to what the Ford government has been doing in secondary schools, and in particular the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), which runs a large number of schools which were formerly selective (e.g. Schools of the Arts, Special STEM focus schools, International Baccalaureates, etc.). The selectivity process, naturally, was criticized because marks are often correlated with family income, and so 3 years ago, at the peak of the EDI wave, the TDSB decided to abandon selections and make all these schools lottery-based, which in theory at least would make access to these programs more equitable.
I have no idea whether this policy met its goal or not; to my knowledge there has not been a publicly released study on this. But it caused a number of people to freak out. Accusations of penalizing students who worked hard, of “devaluing merit” began to circulate. And there was some force to those arguments, particularly (IMHO) for elite Fine Arts programs where students no longer had to submit portfolios as evidence of talent/interest, which I think is a bit odd. I have never seen any surveys about this issue, but my guess is that it rankled particularly hard among parents in the entitled upper-middle class and aspirational Chinese families, since these are the groups that tend to do best in a “marks-only” system (for more on how Chinese parents view contextual ideas of merit, do listen to my podcast interview with Ruixue Jia, co-author of The Highest Exam from last fall).
And so, Ford government to the rescue! The government instructed the TDSB to ditch the policy, to loud applause from Trustee Weidong Pei, who gained office campaigning against lotteries. Replacing the lottery system? Well, according to the TDSB “Applicants will be seated based on their overall applicant score; a combination of select report card marks connected to their program of choice and an evaluated demonstration of knowledge and skills”, which sounds a lot like the previous marks-only based system, with all the class-and culture-based biases that brings.
In other words, if the TDSB’s experience is anything to go by, the Ford government will go straight to option 4. And if that happens, it will be a seriously contentious affair since almost certainly it will mean a big reduction in students from underserved groups getting into high-demand programs.
Now, none of this is going to happen in this admissions cycle (at least I bloody hope not). The likeliest scenario is that the government makes a move in the spring or summer, in order to put new rules in place – whatever those rules end up being – in place for the fall 2027 admissions cycle. So, we have a few months left before the wars start. But when they start, it won’t be pretty.
Source: Merit Wars
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Multicultural Meanderings 