The Media Roundup provides links to recent and archived articles, in both English and French, on immigration and diversity appearing in the national and local news. Some international content is also included. Articles are updated weekly.
“We’ve had so much thrown our way by this government,” said Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association. The latest comments she cites are from Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, who insinuated women who wear a face-covering niqab may be terrorists. In an interview with Vice posted June 11, he upheld the Conservative government’s view women should have to remove their niqab to take the oath at citizenship ceremonies, saying Canadians support that. “They don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists,” Alexander said in the piece. Alexander’s office denied the minister made the remark, but in the interview posted on the Vice website, Alexander says about the niqab ban: “The overwhelming majority of Canadians want that rule to continue to apply. We’ve done a lot in the past year to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. People take pride in that. They don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists. They don’t want people to become citizens who haven’t respected the rules.” “It’s devastating to say the least,” said Siddiqui. Such remarks may appeal to the Conservative party base but cause harm to Canadian Muslims and how they’re perceived, she said
Globe and Mail – Grassroots Initiative Hopes to Bring 1,000 Syrian Refugees to Toronto
A movement to welcome and resettle 1,000 Syrian refugees was launched in Toronto Wednesday, aiming to rekindle the spirit that brought tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to this country a generation ago. Lifeline Syria hopes to recruit and train small groups of citizens to become sponsors for refugees and ease their transition out of what the group called the biggest humanitarian emergency of our times. Toronto Mayor John Tory spoke in support of the project and called on the mayors of Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver to encourage similar grassroots initiatives in their own cities. […] Canada has pledged to resettle 10,000 Syrians over three years, and a significant portion are expected to be privately sponsored rather than government sponsored. Canada is unique among countries receiving refugees in that citizens, in groups of five, can pledge to support a refugee by offering financial assistance, covering health-care costs and offering guidance in finding work and making the transition to Canadian life. That program was created in response to the Vietnamese migration of 1979. It was initially seen as a supplement to government sponsorship but has since grown substantially.
National Post – Barbaric Cultural Practices’ Bill to Criminalize Forced Marriage, Tackle ‘Honour Killings’ Passes Final Vote
A bill to outlaw forced marriage, prevent polygamist immigrations and tackle “honour killings” is set to become law. Bill S-7, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, passed its final parliamentary hurdle Tuesday evening, by a vote of 182 to 84. The governing Conservatives and Liberals voted for it, with the New Democrats and Green Party opposed. The bill would raise the marriage age to 16 in addition to adding forced marriage to the Criminal Code. It would also toughen the laws around polygamy, with an eye to preventing immigration by those who engage in the practice and making it easier to deport people who do. And, it would toughen the rules around so-called honour killings, so that the defence of provocation can no longer be used in court.
Toronto Star – Diversity Uncut as Rogers Dismantles Multilingual TV: Goar
“The math didn’t work,” Colette Watson said matter-of-factly. She is the vice-president of television and operations at Rogers Television. It wasn’t a question of math, insisted the Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian and Punjabi-speaking viewers whose newscasts had been chopped. It was a betrayal, pure and simple. In their view, the media giant’s latest cutback broke a long-standing commitment by Ted Rogers, the founder of the network. It violated the broadcaster’s 35-year pledge to champion diversity. It threw Canada’s ethnic minorities off the bus to make room for big-bucks sports franchises and lucrative digital platforms. “Rogers has stripped bare the first-ever multilingual television licence,” said Dr. Joseph Wong, founder of the Yee Hong Foundation for Geriatric Care and a longtime member of the Chinese Canadian National Council. “We are asking the federal government and the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) to make sure Rogers does not systematically dismantle an important part of Canada’s multicultural broadcasting heritage.” He spoke for a coalition of community groups — the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, the Canadian Ethnocultural Council, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and the Toronto chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council — fighting to the reverse the cutback.
CTV News – EU Nations Divided on Plan to Take in Migrants Crossing the Mediterranean
European Union nations failed to bridge differences Tuesday over an emergency plan to share the burden of the thousands of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea, while on the French-Italian border, police in riot gear forcibly removed dozens of migrants. Around 100,000 migrants have entered Europe so far this year, with some 2,000 dead or missing during their perilous quest to reach the continent. Italy and Greece have borne the brunt of the surge, with many more migrants expected to arrive from June through to September. At talks in Luxembourg, EU interior ministers disagreed over how 40,000 new refugees arriving in Italy and Greece should be split up equitably among the 28-nation bloc to ease the load on the two southern nations. […] The current plan to relocate Syrians and Eritreans over the next two years is politically explosive, however, since it would legally set in stone each EU country’s commitment to host a certain number of refugees. Only about 10 of the EU’s 28 nations support the scheme and even those that do want changes in how the refugee distribution is calculated.
La Presse – Chute du nombre de demandes d’asile: Ottawa dit n’avoir rien à se reprocher
Alors que le nombre de réfugiés dans le monde ne cesse de battre des records, au Canada, le nombre de demandes d’asile est en chute libre. Rencontré en entrevue hier, le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration, Chris Alexander, s’en lave les mains. « On ne peut pas reprocher au gouvernement d’avoir tel ou tel nombre de demandeurs d’asile, car nous n’établissons pas les objectifs à cet égard. Nous ne les recrutons pas, les gens font leur demande ou non », a dit le ministre conservateur lors d’une rencontre avec La Presse, en marge d’une conférence qu’il a prononcée à l’invitation du Conseil des relations internationales de Montréal (CORIM). Le Canada, qui accueillait quelque 40 000 réfugiés bon an, mal an au début de la dernière décennie, a reçu tout juste 10 380 demandes d’asile en 2013 et 13 450 l’an dernier. En comparaison, les pays scandinaves, qui ont une population équivalente à celle du Canada, ont reçu 106 230 demandes d’asile en 2014.
