Phillips: Kaffiyeh ban unites all leaders, who are aware of Muslim voter influence in Ontario

Hard to maintain the argument that the kaffiyeh is primarily cultural given context, the statements of Sara Jama and the nature and discourse of protests. And as to Phillips using turbans and kirpans as a counter example, these are primarily religious, even if for some they also have a political significance.

Being sensitive to community concerns does not necessarily mean agreement given conflicting concerns among communities, as the current Jewish Palestinian tensions illustrate, and thus Speaker Arnott made the right call which needs of course, to be implemented with rigorous consistency for all political symbols:

The Speaker of Ontario’s legislature, Ted Arnott, has done something rare: he’s managed to get the leaders of all four parties at Queen’s Park united on a controversial issue.

Of course, they’re united against him — specifically against the ban he’s imposed on wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs in the provincial parliament, indeed anywhere in the legislative precinct that he oversees.

His decision has ignited a fierce debate: is the kaffiyeh, the checkered head scarf worn by Palestinians since time immemorial, cultural or political?

The answer to that binary question must be yes. It’s both — depending. The kaffiyeh has long been a cultural symbol of Palestinian identity. But wearing it has become more political, especially since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war last October.

That’s basically what Arnott said when he announced his ban. Wearing kaffiyehs “at the present time in our assembly,” he said, has become political. Arnott presumably thinks he’s just being consistent by banning kaffiyehs in line with established rules against wearing anything that “is intended to make an overt political statement.”

But what an unnecessary mess he’s created. This was a non-issue at Queen’s Park until Arnott issued his ban, apparently in response to a complaint by one unidentified MPP. It’s not as if there was a rash of kaffiyeh-wearing in the legislature. The only member who regularly wears one is independent Sara Jama, who was thrown out of the NDP caucus last year for her stand on the Mideast conflict.

Now we have the spectacle of Jama being told to leave the chamber for wearing a kaffiyeh. And a group of Arab-Canadian lawyers denied entry to the legislature when they wore kaffiyehs to a meeting with NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

I’m with the party leaders (including Premier Doug Ford) on this one. No doubt there’s a political dimension to wearing a kaffiyeh these days, but the long-established cultural tradition can’t be denied either. Why make an issue out of it at a time when feelings are running so high? Remember the fuss years ago about turbans and kirpans worn by Sikhs? In hindsight it seems like a fight about nothing.

Focusing on the kaffiyeh raises questions of consistency as well. What about wearing a tie or scarf in Ukrainian national colours? One of the Conservative MPPs who refused unanimous consent to overturn Arnott’s decision, Robin Martin, wore a necklace in the legislature emblazoned with “bring them home” in solidarity with Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Good for her, but wasn’t that also “political?”

Some have made much of the fact that party leaders opposing the ban may not be acting entirely for principled reasons, given the byelection set for May 2 in Milton where Muslim voters could make the difference.

I find it hard to be shocked by the notion of politicians acting for political reasons, and in this case the lesson to be drawn is “get used to it.” What’s happening in Milton is just a taste of how Muslim voters may have an impact in key ridings in the next federal election.

All provincial parties are courting Muslim voters in Milton, where 23 per cent of the population identified as Muslim in the 2021 census. The Liberal candidate, Galen Naidoo Harris, who isn’t Arab or Palestinian, has even made a point of wearing a kaffiyeh in social media postings.

Muslim voters are already an important factor in our politics. An organization called The Canadian-Muslim Vote identified more than 100 ridings in 2021where the Muslim vote exceeded the expected margin of victory. Many (including Milton) are in the GTA and will be fiercely fought over in the next federal election.

All the more reason for political leaders to be sensitive to the concerns of Muslim voters, as they’ve learned to be sensitive to the concerns of Sikh, Italian, Ukrainian, Jewish, you-name-it voters who aren’t shy about mobilizing their communities around issues that matter to them.

Banning the kaffiyeh is that kind of issue for an increasingly influential slice of voters. There are good reasons of principle to drop the ban. The politics of it point in that direction too.

Source: Kaffiyeh ban unites all leaders, who are aware of Muslim voter influence in Ontario

Don Kerr: Canada’s population growth is exploding. Here’s why

Good analysis but late to the party like a number of others:

As a professional demographer who has carefully followed Canada’s demographic evolution over the past three decades, I am shocked by some of the most recent demographic data released by Statistics Canada. From 1991 through to 2015, the year in which the current government was first elected, the annual growth in Canada’s population grew in a predictable manner at an average of roughly 320,000 persons per year. 

Following 2015, that growth has rapidly accelerated. Following a temporary dip in population growth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Canada’s population growth reached just over half a million in 2021 (509,285 persons), close to a million in 2022 (930,422), and then an astronomical 1.27 million persons in 2023. 

Put another way, whereas for several decades Canada’s population growth rate hovered at about 1.0 percent annually, this rate has more than tripled in a few short years, up to 3.2 percent in 2023. 

In even starker terms, the 2023 rate of population growth is like adding a new Saskatchewan to Canada’s total population in slightly less than a single calendar year. As of 2023, there is not a single country in the G7 or in the OECD that has a population growth rate even close to Canada’s. Population growth in the U.S., for comparison, is currently at about 0.5 percent. Even prior to the recent upturn, Canada’s rate of population growth was actually the highest in the G7 and among the highest in the OECD. 

Most astoundingly, in making international comparisons, Statistic Canada now points out that Canada in 2023 is among the 20 fastest-growing countries in the world, ranked beside several very high fertility countries, largely situated in sub-Saharan Africa. While Canada’s current population growth of 3.2 percent is obviously not sustainable, a constant growth rate of 3.3 percent would imply a doubling in Canada’s total population in under 25 years.

The last time Canada saw a growth rate comparable to this was fully 67 years ago. In 1957, Canada was close to the height of its baby boom, with a birth rate close to four births per woman. Slowly over decades this growth rate gradually declined as fertility rates fell (no abrupt shifts here).¹  

Most recently, Canada’s growth has almost entirely been the result of international migration (97.6 percent) as the rate of natural increase (births minus deaths) has continued to decline steadily. Hence, the pace at which Canada’s population grows, in a predictable manner, can be seen as a function of Canada’s immigration policy—meaning, then, that this is a policy problem that the federal government, in consultation with the provinces, can solve itself by setting and regulating immigration targets. This includes both permanent immigration (economic, family, and refugee classes) as well as the increase in non-permanent residents (international students, temporary work permits, and asylum claimants). 

The question remains as to how we have gotten into this situation in the first place. When Sean Fraser was first appointed to the Trudeau cabinet as immigration minister in the fall of 2021, Canada’s growth rate was roughly 1 percent. By the time he was shifted from immigration to housing and infrastructure in the summer of 2023, Canada’s growth rate had climbed to its current heights. As many commenters have pointed out, it is somewhat ironic that the minister appointed to fix the issue of housing affordability was the minister of immigration who allowed this unprecedented growth in population. 

In the summer of 2023 when Canada’s population was growing at a rate that had not been seen for almost 70 years, Fraser attempted to downplay the link between population growth and rising housing costs, saying that the solution to the country’s housing woes should not involve closing the door to newcomers. 

The data from both Statistics Canada and the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC) belie the minister’s baffling assertion. Canada’s demographic growth has clearly outpaced its housing stock. Coming out of the pandemic, housing starts climbed to 271,000 in 2021, the highest number recorded for half a century, only to drop slightly in 2022 and 2023. In total, Canada witnessed about 800,000 housing starts over the 2021-2023 period, whereas over this same period, Canada’s population grew by over 2.5 million. The fact that the CMHC forecasts fewer than 224,000 starts in 2024 and only 232,000 in 2025 does not bode well for housing affordability in Canada, particularly in the context of continuing rapid population growth. 

Having said all this, it seems that the federal government has finally woken up to this issue and is now committed to reducing this growth. Current immigration minister, Marc Miller, has made overtures towards slowing Canada’s population growth—even potentially back down to historically sustainable levels. Most importantly, Miller recently announced that the proportion of “non-permanent residents” (NPRs) in Canada will be reduced from its current level of fully 6.2 percent of the total Canadian population down to 5.0 percent over the next three years. For context, NPRs were only about 3.1 percent of Canada’s population in 2021. [mfnBy NPRs, the federal government is referring to international students, persons in Canada on temporary work permits, as well as asylum claimants.[/mfn]

As the government has already capped and reduced the number of international students, a sizeable share of this reduction will occur among persons with temporary work permits. Over 60 percent of Canada’s population growth in 2023 was a by-product of the increase in the number of NPRs. If immediately implemented, Canada could shift from admitting an additional 800,000 NPRs in 2023 to seeing a decline in the number of NPRs by perhaps -160,000 in 2024 (serving to reduce Canada’s rate of growth). Merely with this reform, and continuing with its current commitment to welcoming roughly half a million landed immigrants yearly over the next several years, Canada’s growth rate could return to sanity. The issue remains as to how successful the government will be in implementing this reform.

The dramatic shift in Canada’s rate of population growth has inevitably had important consequences, and not all of them positive. Take, for example, the increasing strain on the country’s already-burdened health and social services. In policy terms, a steady, gradual upturn in population growth is far better for planning future labour force, housing, and infrastructure needs.

Overall, Canada will be well served into the future by returning to and maintaining a predictable rate of population growth and avoiding the rather abrupt shifts experienced most recently. A majority of Canadians have long been supportive of Canadian immigration policy. The recent mishandling of this file has jeopardized this consensus. Hopefully not irreparably. 

Don Kerr is a demographer who teaches at Kings University College at Western University. From 1992-2000 he worked in the demography division at Statistics Canada.

Source: Don Kerr: Canada’s population growth is exploding. Here’s why

Premier Legault ups pressure on Trudeau to deliver on immigration power promise

So it goes:

Premier François Legault is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make good on a commitment to turn over more powers over immigration to Quebec.

And Legault said he does not share Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre’s Plamondon’s gloomy forecast of Quebec’s future in the Canadian federation. He questioned the PQ’s leader’s credentials noting “not so long ago Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon was not even a nationalist.”

“I respect the opinion of Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon but I disagree,” Legault said at a news conference following an announcement that the government will create a new national museum of history in the Quebec capital.

“I still think that we can manage, with the federal government, to get more power to better defend our identity.”

He then went on to remind Trudeau of commitments he made at a March 14 meeting in Montreal. Legault said Trudeau was open to finding solutions to the growing number of temporary immigrants in Quebec — they now number 560,000 — which are heavily taxing Quebec’s health, education and housing systems.

It was after that meeting that Legault said Trudeau was open to discussing the addition of immigration visas on more countries, such as was done recently to make it more difficult for workers from Mexico to come to Canada.

The prime minister expressed openness to discussing the idea of giving Quebec a say on the admission of temporary workers and that some be refused when they seek to renew their permits to work here, Legault said. The premier added Trudeau said he would entertain new rules ensuring more of the workers speak French.

“It doesn’t make sense to have 560,000 temporary immigrants, it doesn’t make sense,” Legault said Thursday, turning up the heat on Trudeau. “We do not have the welcoming capacity plus 180,000 asylum seekers. Mr. Trudeau said he would look at different ways to transfer power or have a pre-approval by the Quebec government.

“He promised me a new meeting before June 30 so I will wait and see the situation, but right now I’m a bit scared about the situation. It’s important that Mr. Trudeau makes a concrete gesture to reduce this number.”

Legault, who has made his encounters with the media scarce in the last few weeks, responded as well to a speech St-Pierre Plamondon delivered at a party council meeting April 14 in Drummondville.

St-Pierre Plamondon painted a gloomy picture of Quebec’s future in Canada, accusing the federal government and Trudeau of cooking up a plan to erase Quebec. He said the only solution to save Quebec’s language and culture is a referendum on independence, which he promised to hold should he form a government in 2026.

On Thursday, Legault responded by noting St-Pierre Plamondon has changed his views many times. He noted St-Pierre Plamondon has said that nationalism is not necessarily the solution and the PQ’s approach to selling sovereignty was “childish,” because it believes the reason Quebecers are not overwhelmingly in favour of independence is because the movement has not explained its ideas enough.

“He’s the one who started quoting my past statements,” Legault said Thursday defending his attacks. “What we need to remember is that not very long ago Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon was not even a nationalist. He found being a nationalist was not a good idea.”

Source: Premier Legault ups pressure on Trudeau to deliver on immigration power promise

Paul: You’ve Been Wronged. That Doesn’t Make You Right.

Increasing common thread in commentary these days on the “Oppression Olympics:”

We are living in a golden age of aggrievement. No matter who you are or what your politics, whatever your ethnic origin, economic circumstance, family history or mental health status, chances are you have ample reason to be ticked off.

If you’re on the left, you have been oppressed, denied, marginalized, silenced, erased, pained, underrepresented, underresourced, traumatized, harmed and hurt. If you’re on the right, you’ve been ignored, overlooked, demeaned, underestimated, shouted down, maligned, caricatured and despised; in Trumpspeak: wronged and betrayed.

Plenty of the dissatisfaction is justified. But not all. What was Jan. 6 at heart but a gigantic tantrum by those who felt they’d been cheated and would take back their due, by whatever means necessary?

People have always fought over unequal access to scarce resources. Yet never has our culture made the claiming of complaint such an animating force, a near compulsory zero-sum game in which every party feels as if it’s been uniquely abused. Nor has the urge to leverage powerlessness as a form of power felt quite so universal — more pervasive on the left, if considerably more threatening on the right.

Against this backdrop, reading Frank Bruni’s new book, “The Age of Grievance,” is one sad nod and head shake after another. Building on the concept of the oppression Olympics, “the idea that people occupying different rungs of privilege or victimization can’t possibly grasp life elsewhere on the ladder,” which he first described in a 2017 column, Bruni, now a contributing writer for Times Opinion, shows how that mind-set has been baked into everything from elementary school to government institutions. Tending to our respective fiefs, Bruni writes, is “to privilege the private over the public, to gaze inward rather than outward, and that’s not a great facilitator of common cause, common ground, compromise.”

Consider its reflection in just one phenomenon: “progressive stacking,” a method by which an assumed hierarchy of privilege is inverted so that the most marginalized voices are given precedence. Perhaps worthy in theory. But who is making these determinations and according to which set of assumptions? Think of the sticky moral quandaries: Who is more oppressed, an older, disabled white veteran or a young, gay Latino man? A transgender woman who lived for five decades as a man or a 16-year-old girl? What does it mean that vying for the top position involves proving how hard off and vulnerable you are?

Individuals as well as tribes, ethnic groups and nations are divvied up into simplistic binaries: colonizer vs. colonized, oppressor vs. oppressed, privileged and not. On college campuses and in nonprofit organizations, in workplaces and in public institutions, people can determine, perform and weaponize their grievance, knowing they can appeal to the administration, to human resources or to online court where they will be rewarded with attention, if not substantive improvement in actual circumstance.

The aggrieved take to social media where those looking to be offended are fed at the trough. Bruni refers to those who let you know that some representative of a wronged party is under threat the “indignity sentries of Twitter.” Ready to stir the pot, let the indignation begin and may the loudest complainer win!

But goading people into a constant sense of alarmism distracts from actual wrongdoing in the world. Turning complex tragedies into simple contests between who ticks more boxes rarely clarifies the situation. In San Francisco, when a Black Hispanic female district attorney chose not to file charges against the Black Walgreens security guard who shot Banko Brown, a Black, homeless transgender man who was accused of shoplifting, the entire episode was read not only as a crime and a referendum on arming security guards but also as a human rights crisis, simultaneously anti-trans, anti-homeless and racist.

In Brooklyn, when a man presumed to be homeless and mentally ill reportedly killed a golden retriever and the police did not immediately arrest him, the dog owner’s fears and efforts by some in the community to get the police to respond were read as racist vigilantism. The ensuing finger-pointing, name-calling and outrage did nothing to address the problems of homelessness, public safety or mental health.

The compulsion to find offense everywhere leaves us endlessly stewing. Whatever your politics, it assumes and feeds a narrative that stretches expansively from the acutely personal to the grandly political — from me and mine to you and the other, from us vs. them to good vs. evil. And as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff warned in their book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the calculus is that if you’re hurt or upset, your feelings must be validated. You can see this reductive mind-set in action in protest after protest across America as a contest plays out between Jews and Palestinians over who has been historically more oppressed and should therefore have the upper hand now.

But as Ricky Gervais says, “Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.” Being oppressed doesn’t necessarily make you good, any more than “might is right.” Having been victimized doesn’t give you a pass.

If it felt like any of the persecution grandstanding led to progress, we might wanly allow grievance culture to march on. Instead, as one undergraduate noted in the Harvard Political Review, “In pitting subjugated groups against one another, the Oppression Olympics not only reduce the store of resources to which groups and movements have access, but also breed intersectional bitterness that facilitates further injustice.” Rewarding a victim-centric worldview, which we do from the classroom to the workplace to our political institutions, only sows more divisiveness and fatalism. It seems to satisfy no one, and people are more outraged than ever. Even those who hate Tucker Carlson become Tucker Carlson.

The acrimony has only intensified in the past few years. The battlefield keeps widening. What begins as a threat often descends into protests, riots and physical violence. It’s difficult for anyone to wade through all of this without feeling wronged in one way or another. But it wrongs us all. And if we continue to mistake grievance for righteousness, we only set ourselves up for more of the same.

Source: You’ve Been Wronged. That Doesn’t Make You Right.

Library Association pulls award for RMC professor’s book

Lubomyr was one of my interlocutors when negotiating the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund and was the more activist of the three so not totally surprising to see this controversy:

The largest library association in the world has pulled an award for a book co-edited by a Royal Military College professor over concerns it whitewashes Nazi collaborators and war criminals.

In late January, the American Library Association honoured the book, Enemy Archives, edited by Royal Military College professor Lubomyr Luciuk and Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Viatrovych, on its list of the best historical materials for 2022 and 2023.

But the book has been criticized by a Jewish organization and Holocaust scholars who have raised concerns it whitewashes Nazi collaborators in Ukraine during the Second World War.

The association has now retracted the award and is investigating how the book came to be honoured in the first place.

“We apologize for the harm caused by the work’s initial inclusion on the list,” Jean Hodges, director of communications for the library association, said in a statement.

“The committee will be reviewing the award manual and procedures,” she added.

Luciuk, in an email to this newspaper, noted the library association’s decision was “perplexing” and added that journalists should read the book lest they “misrepresent” it.

Viatrovych did not respond to requests for comment.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, which promotes Holocaust education, welcomed the decision by the American Library Association.

“It is very disappointing to see that some are willing to use this moment of great public support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression as an opportunity to re-write Ukrainian history, and specifically to whitewash the involvement of Ukrainian nationals in the commission of genocide against Ukrainian Jewry,” said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director for policy and advocacy at the center. “This book got a platform it never deserved given the outright misinformation it contains, and we are glad to see this problem being rectified as institutions take a closer look at the book and its dangerous and outrageous claims.”

Enemy Archives: Soviet Counterinsurgency Operations and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement – Selections from the Secret Police Archives discusses the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as well as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Some Ukrainians see those who belonged to those organizations as heroes who fought against the Soviets.

Some Holocaust scholars, Jewish organizations, and the Polish government have labelled those individuals as Nazi collaborators who were involved in the murders of up to 100,000 Poles and Jews.

The National Post published an excerpt from Enemy Archives on Feb. 9, 2023, prompting criticism from the news agency, the Jewish News Syndicate, as well as the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Rob Roberts, editor-in-chief of the National Post, told the Jewish News Syndicate at the time that “the excerpt included a paragraph disputing the view that the Second World War era Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were Nazi collaborators. However, we recognize that this collaboration has been established by prior scholarship.”

Luciuk told JNS that “the so-called ‘Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’ should read the book. They obviously haven’t.”

McGill-Queens University Press, which published the book, stated that Enemy Archives was rigorously examined before being released. “The path of Ukrainian nationalism, and its intersections with Jewish history over the past century, is often challenging and difficult to reconcile, with significant impacts on current political events in the region,” noted Lisa Quinn, executive director of McGill‐Queen’s University Press. “There are inherent yet necessary risks in this area of study, and to participating in the contentious academic and public debates about how to tell these histories to advance understanding of both the past and present.”

Per Anders Rudling, a professor at Lund University in Sweden who has extensively studied the issue of Nazi collaborators, issued a statement about the book, noting “I am frankly surprised McGill Queen’s Press (would) lend itself to this form of memory activism.”

National Defence sent an email noting the views expressed are entirely those of Luciuk and his co-authors and the professor has the right of academic freedom.

Supporters of the book have focused much of their anger on Ukrainian-Jewish writer Lev Golinkin, who they blame for the American Library Association’s decision to pull the award.

Golinkin wrote an April 10 article in the U.S. publication, The Nation, arguing the book was whitewashing Nazi collaborators.

The Council of the Ukrainian Library Association and another related group launched an appeal of the American Library Association’s decision. They claimed Golinkin, who has taken part in protests against Russia, is pushing pro-Russian propaganda.

Viatrovych also shared a social media response in which a Ukrainian pointed out that Golinkin is a Jew and a parasite.

That same account also accused another Ukrainian Jew, who has spoken out about the history of Nazi collaborators, of being a parasite.

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler referred to Jews as parasites to justify their destruction.

Source: Library Association pulls award for RMC professor’s book

Idées | Ce qu’il faut comprendre des hypothèques islamiques du budget Trudeau

More of an explainer than advocacy although notes the difficulty of separating out halal mortgages from other banking products and, for the purists, of obtaining a halal mortgage from a non-halal financial situation:

Le nouveau budget fédéral a annoncé des mesures visant à améliorer l’accès à la propriété. Parmi les mesures annoncées figure l’option d’offrir aux consommateurs intéressés de confession musulmane des produits financiers parallèles comme les prêts hypothécaires dits « halal ». Le document du budget n’a pas offert plus de détails à ce propos, laissant la porte ouverte à des interprétations multiples. Nous proposons dans ce qui suit de répondre à des questions d’importance sur le sujet, que ce soit pour le consommateur ou pour les institutions financières et les organismes de réglementation provinciaux et fédéral.

Qu’entend-on par hypothèque « halal » ?

Il s’agit d’un contrat d’hypothèque « spécial » dans la mesure où ses dispositions sont conformes aux préceptes et à la doctrine de la religion musulmane. Le principe de base est que l’institution financière émettrice du prêt hypothécaire ne doit pas facturer explicitement de l’intérêt (ou l’usure) parce qu’il s’agit d’une pratique qui n’est pas permise par l’islam. La doctrine explique que l’interdiction de la pratique de l’usure vise à protéger les gens qui se trouvent dans le besoin d’emprunter de l’argent parce que cela empirerait leur situation financière et les maintiendrait dans la pauvreté.

Il importe de mentionner que même si la pratique de l’intérêt n’est pas permise, la structure du prêt « halal » est construite de façon que les institutions financières puissent quand même faire de l’argent. Par exemple, la formule dite « Ijara » est équivalente à un contrat de location-achat où l’emprunteur paierait des mensualités équivalentes à un loyer jusqu’à paiement complet du prix de la propriété. Ou encore la formule « Musharaka », selon laquelle l’emprunteur gagne progressivement un pourcentage de la propriété à mesure qu’il effectue ses paiements. Il y a également une formule connue sous le nom « Murabaha », où l’emprunteur achète la propriété à un prix majoré dès le départ, puis paie des mensualités pour rembourser cette somme majorée.

Dans tous les cas mentionnés ci-haut, les paiements seront du même ordre que ceux d’un prêt hypothécaire traditionnel, avec un petit supplément qui reflète le coût engagé par l’institution financière pour offrir ce type « spécial » de produits financiers. C’est comme consommer bio ou végétalien ou écolo : ça coûte un peu plus cher que consommer de façon classique. Au fond, le consommateur accepte de payer une prime pour satisfaire ses préférences, qu’elles soient gastronomiques ou écologiques ou religieuses.

Pourquoi le gouvernement fédéral a-t-il choisi précisément ce type de produits financiers pour l’inclure dans son budget ?

Une partie des musulmans du Canada seraient certainement bien disposés à payer un peu plus cher pour avoir une hypothèque halal. Plus le marché des produits financiers est compétitif, moins cher il sera. Ce type de produits financiers est surtout important pour les musulmans pratiquants, puisqu’ils sont plus orthodoxes dans la pratique de leur foi. Ceux-ci représenteraient moins de 1 % de la population canadienne.

Dans ce sens, l’effet de cette disposition sur le marché de l’immobilier, sur la rentabilité bancaire et sur l’accès à la propriété serait plutôt mineur. Par ailleurs, ces produits visant plutôt la faction pratiquante des musulmans du Canada, cela permettrait de les intégrer au système bancaire canadien, dont les opérations sont assujetties au suivi et à la surveillance des autorités réglementaires pertinentes (BSIF et CANAFE au niveau fédéral, en plus des organismes provinciaux).

L’intégration financière est importante pour les organismes de réglementation puisqu’elle augmente la transparence des transactions effectuées par les différents opérateurs financiers. Si une partie de la population n’a pas accès aux services financiers sur un certain marché, le marché canadien dans notre cas, elle tendra à aller chercher un autre marché qui la servira. Les marchés de la finance islamique dans les pays de l’Asie du Sud-Est ainsi qu’au Moyen-Orient sont prolifiques et offrent des services financiers conformes à la charia.

C’est précisément ce genre de scénarios où des consommateurs canadiens sont servis par des marchés hors Canada que les organismes de réglementation essaient d’éviter.

Qu’est-ce que cette nouvelle disposition dans le budget implique, une fois implantée ?

Des coûts, des coûts et des coûts !

Les institutions financières devront se doter de l’infrastructure technologique pour intégrer ces produits dans leurs systèmes. Elles devront aussi se doter de l’expertise juridique et financière pour pouvoir servir cette clientèle. La facture sera vraisemblablement refilée aux clients.

Les organismes de réglementation devront également se doter de ressources ayant l’expertise en la matière afin de pouvoir exercer efficacement leurs mandats de surveillance. Un aspect essentiel dans les produits financiers islamiques est le partage du risque entre le prêteur et l’emprunteur (« profit and loss sharing).

Cette dimension a des implications sur le risque pris par les institutions financières et, par ricochet, sur leurs niveaux de capitalisation, qui demanderaient à être rajustés pour tenir compte du risque lié à ces produits nouveaux. Les coûts engagés par les organismes de réglementation sont d’habitude refilés aux institutions financières afin que les contribuables n’en héritent pas. Les institutions financières les refileront aux consommateurs en fonction des produits financiers offerts à leurs clients.

En somme, comment peut-on évaluer cette initiative énoncée dans le budget fédéral ?

Sur le plan politique, elle envoie certes un signal attrayant à la population de confession musulmane, indépendamment de son intention d’avoir (ou pas) une hypothèque halal. L’initiative serait perçue comme un signe de considération envers les musulmans canadiens, surtout dans le contexte global où le Canada avait offert son soutien à Israël dans le conflit qui a suivi l’attaque perpétrée par le Hamas en octobre. Il s’agit ainsi d’une tentative habile de se racheter auprès de la communauté musulmane, qui se sentirait plutôt trahie par la politique étrangère canadienne plutôt pro-israélienne.

Par ailleurs, sur les plans économique et financier, l’incidence est mineure puisque la population visée par cette disposition du budget ne représente pas plus de 1 % du marché des prêts hypothécaires.

Enfin, il faut dire que l’approche adoptée par le gouvernement fédéral est un peu hâtive, ce qui explique les limites de l’initiative. En fait, un prêt hypothécaire halal ne peut se faire, si l’on se fie à la doctrine, par une banque non islamique. C’est comme faire un ragoût avec de la viande halal et non halal mélangée : le tout combiné n’est évidemment plus halal. Ensuite, un prêt hypothécaire halal ne peut se faire sans l’ouverture d’un compte chèques ou d’un compte d’épargne. Ces comptes seraient-ils halal ? Il faudra donc créer ces produits au même titre que les hypothèques halal.

En outre, tout compte d’une institution financière canadienne est protégé par le système d’assurance-dépôts du Canada (ou l’équivalent provincial). Le fait est que l’assurance est un concept non halal, ce qui implique qu’il faudrait créer l’équivalent islamique (appelé « takaful »).

Tout cela pour dire que l’initiative des hypothèques halal proposée par le fédéral n’est que la pointe de l’iceberg de tout un système, et que pour qu’un consommateur pratiquant accepte d’y adhérer (toujours selon la doctrine du texte coranique), il faudra lui proposer le « combo » halal : il n’acceptera pas un produit islamique par-ci et d’autres non islamiques par-là.

Source: Idées | Ce qu’il faut comprendre des hypothèques islamiques du budget Trudeau

Lewis: The Left Needs to Handle Its Antisemitism Problem—NOW

Yes:

In recent days, we have witnessed chaos on and around the Columbia University campus, as threats against Jewish students have created an intolerable and combustible atmosphere.

A woman attempting to hide her identity held up a sign with an arrow pointing toward pro-Israel students that read “Al-Qasam’s Next Target,” a reference to Hamas’ military wing. Other protesters told students, “Go back to Europe. Go back to Poland.”

Another protester shouted, “The 7th of October is going to be every day for you,” in reference to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Others sang a chant, which included the words, “We support Hamas’ fight!” and “Hamas we love you. We support your rockets too!” An Arab-Israeli journalist was allegedly assaulted by agitators. These are just a few of the alleged threats and assaults that have been documented on or near this campus.

While protests of all kinds are often marred by fringe actors—doing and saying terrible things that don’t represent the views of the larger group—it’s difficult to watch the videos and not conclude that there is blatant antisemitism at play among at least some of these pro-Palestinian protesters. Even if they’re a minority of the larger movement, what we’re seeing on and around the campus of one of the most hallowed institutions of higher education in America are not merely peaceful calls for a ceasefire or more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

There’s rank antisemitism, full stop, and it needs to be dealt with immediately.

One obvious step is for prominent Americans who have advocated for Palestinians in Gaza to forcefully condemn this behavior. Today.

If you are a prominent progressive influencer, pundit, or elected official (looking at you, Squad members), this is the time for you to go on the record and say that the antisemitic “fringe” of this movement—ostensibly in support of Palestinian rights and an end to the war in Gaza—does not speak for the larger group.

As it happens, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)—an outspoken critic of Israel whose daughter was one of the students arrested last week at Columbia—doesn’t seem too interested in rooting out the bigots that share her passion for the cause. Frankly, she’s not even interested in admitting they exist.

Rep. Omar on Monday tweeted, “Throughout history, protests were co-opted and made to look bad so police and public leaders would shut them down. That’s what we are seeing now at Columbia University. The Columbia protesters have made clear their demands and want their school not to be complacent in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. Public officials and media making this about anything else are inflaming the situation and need to bring calmness and sanity back.”

That’s a lot of words to perform a Jedi Mind Trick: “These aren’t the antisemites you’re looking for.” (By contrast, Columbia Law Students for Palestine, to their credit, condemned the antisemitic incidents.)

Trust me when I say this matters. When racists on the right voiced repugnant ideas, some of us on the center-right stood up and condemned it. We did so because it was morally correct and because we hoped to prevent evil actors from co-opting and discrediting the conservative cause. Sadly, it was too little, too late.

The good news for mainstream Democrats is that these radical attitudes have not yet seized control of your political party. President Joe Biden, for example, has condemned the protests. There is still time to do the right thing.

But take it from me, parties can be hijacked more quickly than you can imagine. In four short years, the GOP went from Mitt Romney as the standard bearer to Donald Trump. You’ve got to identify it and uproot the cancer before it metastasizes. Because once it spreads, it’s too late.

If you’re still not sure this is a hill to die on, just imagine what you would think if such vicious antisemitism was coming from the right instead of the left. (Remember Charlottesville?)

Yes, there are some people who are looking to grab a short, out-of-context viral clip to make your entire movement look bad. Yes, some of these videos show events that happened on Columbia’s campus, while some took place outside the campus on a public street, where non-students were among the protesters.

But there are more than a few “bad apples” to deduce that the far left has an antisemitism problem. And honest brokers among that political tribe ought to be principled and courageous enough to admit it. Even if it’s only two or three people out of a hundred, it’s time to forcefully condemn it. Just say, “You don’t speak for us!”

This is your problem. This is your mess. Clean up your movement, before it’s too late.

Source: The Left Needs to Handle Its Antisemitism Problem—NOW

McWhorter: I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.

Valid contrast if similar protests were against other groups or issues:

Last Thursday, in the music humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students were giving an in-class presentation on the composer John Cage. His most famous piece is “4’33”,” which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that period of time.

I had to tell the students we could not listen to that piece that afternoon, because the surrounding noise would have been not birds or people walking by in the hallway, but infuriated chanting from protesters outside the building. Lately that noise has been almost continuous during the day and into the evening, including lusty chanting of “From the river to the sea.” Two students in my class are Israeli; three others to my knowledge are American Jews. I couldn’t see making them sit and listen to this as if it were background music.

I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans, or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence. I’d wager that most of the student protesters against the Gaza War would view them that way, in fact. Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?

Although I know many Jewish people will disagree with me, I don’t think that Jew-hatred is as much the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. I know some of the protesters, including a couple who were taken to jail last week, and I find it very hard to imagine that they are antisemitic. Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it.

Conversations I have had with people heatedly opposed to the war in Gaza, signage and writings on social media and elsewhere, and anti-Israel and generally hard-leftist comments that I have heard for decades on campuses place these confrontations within a larger battle against power structures — here in the form of what they call colonialism and genocide — and against whiteness. The idea is that Jewish students and faculty should be able to tolerate all of this because they are white.

I understand this to a point. Pro-Palestinian rallies and events, of which there have been many here over the years, are not in and of themselves hostile to Jewish students, faculty and staff members. Disagreement will not always be a juice and cookies affair. However, the relentless assault of this current protest — daily, loud, louder, into the night and using ever-angrier rhetoric — is beyond what anyone should be expected to bear up under regardless of their whiteness, privilege or power.

Social media discussion has been claiming that the protests are peaceful. They are, some of the time; it varies by location and day — generally what goes on within the campus gates is somewhat less strident than what happens just outside them. But relatively constant are the drumbeats — people will differ on how peaceful that sound can ever be, just as they will differ on the nature of antisemitism. What I do know is that even the most peaceful of protests would be treated as outrages if they were interpreted as, say, anti-Black — even if the message were coded, as in a bunch of people quietly holding up MAGA signs or wearing T-shirts saying “All Lives Matter.”

And besides, calling all this peaceful stretches the use of the word rather implausibly. It’s an odd kind of peace when a local rabbi urges Jewish students to go home as soon as possible, when an Arab-Israeli activist is roughed up on Broadway, when the angry chanting becomes so constant that you almost start not to hear it and it starts to feel normal to see posters and clothing portraying Hamas as heroes. The other night I watched a dad coming from the protest with his little girl, giving a good hard few final snaps on the drum he was carrying, nodding at her in crisp salute, percussing his perspective into her little mind. This is not peaceful.

I understand that the protesters and their fellow travelers feel that all of this is the proper response, social justice on the march. They have been told that righteousness means placing the battle against whiteness and its power front and center, contesting the abuse of power by any means necessary. And I myself think the war on Gaza is no longer constructive or even coherent.

However, the issues are complex, in ways that this uncompromising brand of power-battling is ill suited to address. Legitimate questions remain about the definition of genocide, about the extent of a nation’s right to defend itself and about the justice of partition (which has not historically been limited to Palestine). There is a reason many consider the Israel-Palestine conflict the most morally challenging in the modern world.

When I was at Rutgers in the mid-1980s, the protests were against investment in South Africa’s apartheid regime. There were similarities with the Columbia protests now: A large group of students established an encampment site right in front of the Rutgers student center on College Avenue, where dozens slept every night for several weeks. Among the largely white crowd, participation was a badge of civic commitment. There was chanting, along with the street theater inevitable, and perhaps even necessary, to effective protest — one guy even laid down in the middle of College Avenue to block traffic, taking a page from the Vietnam protests.

I don’t recall South Africans on campus feeling personally targeted, but the bigger difference was that though the protesters sought to make their point at high volume, over a long period and sometimes even rudely, they did not seek to all but shut down campus life.

On Monday night, Columbia announced that classes would be hybrid until the end of the semester, in the interest of student safety. I presume that the protesters will continue throughout the two main days of graduation, besmirching one of the most special days of thousands of graduates’ lives in the name of calling down the “imperialist” war abroad.

Today’s protesters don’t hate Israel’s government any more than yesterday’s hated South Africa’s. But they have pursued their goals with a markedly different tenor — in part because of the single-mindedness of antiracist academic culture and in part because of the influence of iPhones and social media, which inherently encourage a more heightened degree of performance. It is part of the warp and woof of today’s protests that they are being recorded from many angles for the world to see. One speaks up.

But these changes in moral history and technology can hardly be expected to comfort Jewish students in the here and now. What began as intelligent protest has become, in its uncompromising fury and its ceaselessness, a form of abuse.

Source: I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.

Salman Rushdie Weighs In on Death Threats Against Taylor Swift Critic

Worth reading. Money quote: People have to stop having such thin skins.”:

Jon Stewart seemed a bit sheepish when he asked famed author Salman Rushdie, a victim of murder attempts on account of his novel Satanic Verses, to weigh in on Paste’s byline-less Taylor Swift critique this week on The Daily Show, after the site chose to publish their scathing review of the singer’s latest album anonymously due to death threats sent to the writer of their previous Swift critique.

Rushdie was violently attacked and stabbed 15 times in 2022 while giving a lecture in western New York. The acclaimed author was 75 at the time and narrowly escaped with his life. His assailant was motivated by an order for Rushdie’s death by Iran’s leader in the 1980s, who deemed Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses blasphemous. That assailant later admitted to only reading “a couple pages” of the novel before attacking him.

After experiencing the violence someone can be driven to based even on the smallest tidbit of information, Rushdie seemed to Stewart a good person to ask about our current climate, in which a music critic has to publish their work without their name. As Paste stated at the time, “We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.”

“There was a critic—and this is gonna sound like a joke—a critic of Taylor Swift’s new music album, The Tortured Poets Department, they had to remove the critic’s name from the critique because of death threats,” Stewart told Rushdie on The Daily Show Monday night.

“Because he didn’t like the record?” Rushdie asked in disbelief.

“Everybody’s so angry right now, that nobody can listen or talk to anybody else,” he added. “Everybody’s an expert, everybody’s got an opinion, and hostility. The level of anger is crazy right now.”

Rushdie said that though he doesn’t have the “answer to the world’s problems,” he has a few theories about why people seem to be resorting to violence more often over the simplest of disagreements—such as whether Swift’s album was good or bad. “People have always disagreed and people have always said, ‘You can’t say that, you’ve got to say this.’ That’s not new,” he said.

“What’s happened [now] is the temperature has risen,” Rushdie continued. “What’s new is the volume and the heat—so what do we do about taking down the volume and taking down the heat, that’s the question.”

The writer added that the level of violence and anger we’re seeing now has to do with a society in which “we’re all very easily offended,” adding, “People have to stop having such thin skins.”

“What’s more is we also believe that being offended is a sufficient reason for attacking something—but actually, everything offends somebody, always,” Rushdie said, adding that the future under this kind of thinking doesn’t look good because, “If you go down that road, then we can’t talk to each other anymore.”

He also gave Stewart an update on how life has been since the attack on his life nearly two years ago. “It did certainly have an impact [on me],” he said. “I actually got my life back really, I’ve been living in New York City for 25 years,” after those initial 80s death threats. “For 23 years it was fine. I was doing everything that writers do, book tours, lectures,” he said, “It was a shock when this thing out of a quarter of a century ago, more than that, 30 years ago, sort of came out of a crowd at me.”

Despite the incident’s impact, Rushdie said, “It’s now been around 20 months [ago], I feel like I’m pretty much back to myself I think.”

Source: Salman Rushdie Weighs In on Death Threats Against Taylor Swift Critic

Employers boost recruitment of temporary foreign workers, despite softer labour market

Of note (should decline given recent government changes):

Canadian companies ramped up their recruitment of temporary foreign workers last year, even as the labour market softened and the unemployment rate drifted higher.

During the last quarter of 2023, employers were approved to fill more than 81,000 positions through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, according to figures shared by the federal government with The Globe and Mail. It was easily the largest quarter for approvals since Ottawa made several employer-friendly changes to the program in the spring of 2022.

For the year, employers were approved to fill roughly 240,000 job vacancies, an increase of 7.5 per cent from 2022 – and more than double what was permitted in 2018.

The federal government is now trying to clamp down on temporary migration to the country with various changes that include tighter restrictions on the TFW program. Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said that Canadian companies have become “addicted” to temporary foreign labour….

Source: Employers boost recruitment of temporary foreign workers, despite softer labour market