CANADA’S LAMBS LED TO SLAUGHTER
A study released last week by two economics professors from Queen’s University shows that our educational system ignores some of the most important immigration issues, probably because it is afraid to deal with them. The two researchers, Charles Beach and Michael Abbott, examined the economic performance of four groups of immigrants who had arrived in Canada in 1982, 1988 and 1994. They concluded that immigrants who entered Canada as skilled workers had much higher earnings than those who entered in other categories such as family class immigrants. They stated that Ottawa should be focusing more on skilled workers than on other immigrant groups. They also concluded that immigrants were particularly vulnerable to effects of recessions.
Their paper ended with a major, headline-grabbing (but timidly stated) recommendation : “Perhaps thought should be given to ways to reduce total immigrant admission levels when severe recessions hit.”
In response to the researchers, one blogger has stated what most Canadians are thinking : “No kidding, Sherlock. The question I’d like answered is why aren’t all economists saying this?”
So, as another Labour Day disappears into the sunset and a new school year begins, we have a few other questions for the two professors as well as for all others involved in education and in the labour movement :
1. Why did these 2 professors not investigate the effect of immigration on Canada’s mainstream population, particularly on the young people they see every day? The Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network, http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/home.php , which published their study, lists a total of 82 pieces of research. Some of them deal with immigration, but most that do are about the effects of immigration on immigrants. This suggests that university researchers think that Canada’s immigration policy exists for immigrants. It also implies that the researchers think that the effects of immigration on mainstream Canadians are irrelevant.
Most Canadians would say that the approach Canada should be taking is the opposite : that is, aside from the humanitarian cases of genuine refugees, Canada’s immigration policies should exist for the benefit of Canada, not for immigrants. For example, educators at every level should be concerned about the unnecessary competition that mainstream Canadian secondary or post-secondary graduates face for jobs, They should also be looking at the unnecessary competition that post-secondary students confront from immigrants in applying for spaces in Canada’s post-secondary institutions, particularly to professional faculties.
However, many university presidents believe that Canada should be doing the opposite. It is also clear that the atmosphere many of these administrators have created on their campuses is much like the atmosphere created in the U.S. during the McCarthy era when suspected communists were hunted down and black-listed. The people that are hunted and blacklisted today are all those who think that education has been changed into forced conformity and who refuse to worship at the altar of multiculturalism and diversity, two absurd deities.
It is no exaggeration to say that these administrators have created a situation where billions in public funds are being used to lead many of Canada’s mainstream young people like lambs to their slaughter. Mainstream Canadian youth suffer from a very high unemployment rate and high debt. The jobless rate for people aged 15 to 24 jumped to 16.2 per cent in August from 13.8 per cent in July, StatsCan’s figures show.
Mainstream youth occupy minority status at a number of Canadian post-secondary institutions and are probably being displaced from many professions. It is clear that a significant number of the people who oversee these young people have cheerled multiculturalism and diversity policies, and have been complicit in the betrayal of the students they are supposed to be protecting.
2. Most Canadians would say that the text books used in our schools should tell the truth about Canada’s own history. Books that advocate that our history be erased and replaced with ideologies like multiculturalism and diversity have no place in Canadian schools. Most Canadians would say that our school boards and our provincial ministries of education should be examining the text books used in our schools for ideological bias. The great irony in the fact that many mainstream Canadian youth are being led to slaughter is that a significant number of these students support high immigration, multiculturalism and diversity policies that will result in their own throats being cut.
Incredible as it may sound, many young people have been convinced that Canada has to commit national suicide. Where did they get this idea? Undoubtedly, our largely cowardly media, especially our CBC, are partly to blame. But what about the books that have been used to teach these students? There is no doubt that the revised history of Canada, one that imposes guilt and the need for perpetual absolution on our youth, is responsible.
3. Most Canadians would also agree that the focus in the language arts curriculum for elementary and secondary should be on making students bilingual in Canada’s two official languages. Our post-secondary institutions, which often require some knowledge of a second language, have set very low standards for mainstream Canadian students as well as for immigrant students. They have accepted comparatively recent immigrant languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi and others ) as languages that satisfy the second language requirement. However, to do this is to elevate these languages almost to the point of being additional official languages in Canada. This is unreasonable accommodation. If a third language is to be taught, a sensible discussion should occur. A First Nations language in the area where the school is located should have far more priority than the languages of recently-arrived immigrants.
To illustrate how absurd this situation has become, a Sikh man recently boasted on CBC Radio’s “Know Your Rights” that he had succeeded in having several school districts teach Punjabi as a second language requirement for students in their school districts. This is nonsense and is probably a great embarrassment to some Sikhs. If Sikhs such as the man in question want their own languages taught, they should open their own after-school language classes and teach that language. They should not expect Canada to do this. They should not claim that because they pay taxes, they have a right to have Punjabi or other language taught in Canada’s schools. These people have to be told bluntly that they are in our house now and that Canadians don’t want to be told how Canada’s house should be run.
4. As for our unions and Labour Day, most Canadians may not know that CCF Founder, J.S. Woodsworth, favoured immigration restrictions such as the Head Tax against cheap Chinese labour. For much of the CCF’s and the NDP’s history, Woodsworth has been regarded as a political saint for his dedication. Most unions agreed with Woodsworth’s view. In fact, on September 7, 1907, half the population of Vancouver paraded through the city’s streets to show that they did not want more Chinese and Japanese cheap labour and did not want to be overwhelmed by Japanese, East Indians (Sikhs) and Chinese.
If faced with a similar inflow of Canadians to China, Japan or India, most Chinese, Japanese and East Indians would have objected to large numbers of Canadians arriving there. As Deputy Minister of Labour Mackenzie King noted after he had investigated why so many Asian labourers arrived in 1907, the Sept. 7, 1907 Vancouver parade and the Vancouver Riot that followed the parade were rooted primarily in economic and cultural matters, not race.
To counteract the advantage that cheap Chinese labour and its destructive consequences now have, Woodsworth and many others in the world’s industrialized countries would probably have favoured an upward revaluation of the Chinese currency. This would be the equivalent of a Head Tax which, contrary to the propaganda circulated today by Canada’s immigration industry and the revisers of Canadian history, was regarded in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as an economic measure designed to protect Canadian workers.
Yet many in our government seem to think that Canadian workers do not count any more. In the midst of an election campaign this week, Ontario Premier McGuinty promised to establish a “Hire An Immigrant” program. This proposal deserves scorn because it says that unemployed immigrants deserve more attention than unemployed mainstream Canadians. McGuinty is far from the only politician who should be chastised for his actions. Canada’s parliament. its provincial legislatures and its municipal offices contain people who have advocated similar measures. For example, just this year, Vancouver City Council, on which J.S. Woodsworth’s niece Ellen Woodsworth ironically sits, established a “Hire An Immigrant” program. J.S. Woodsworth probably rolled over in his grave when his niece voted in favour of this measure.
Unions have also lost their way. They should remember that American labour organizer, Caesar Chavez, who has been elevated to sainthood in the U.S., Canada and many other countries, spoke out against cheap labour that was being imported from Mexico. He did so because he realized that cheap Mexican labour would undermine all of his efforts to unionize and to obtain fair wages for farm labourers in the U.S.
The general point is that all workers in Canada as well as many in other countries have suffered greatly from senseless immigration policy, particularly the policy of importing immigrants in recessions. It should not take a study like the one from Queen’s University to get Canada to cut immigration in recessions. This is basic logic. Yet despite going through three recessions since 1990, Canada has not behaved very logically. In fact, the last Prime Minister to decrease immigration was Pierre Trudeau who reduced immigration to about 85,000 in the early 1980’s. Since 1990, Canada has averaged an intake of about 250,000 immigrants per year.
In 2010, Ottawa shamelessly boasted that it had taken about 280,000 immigrants, Canada’s highest intake since the mid-1950’s. By any measure, this intake is disgraceful. Yet, unions, who are supposed to protect workers, either have said nothing or have tried to recruit new members among the workers who should never have been brought here.
Our educators and our unions need to get their act together.
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For a report on latest unemployment figures, see http://www.theprovince.com/business/Jobless+rate+increases+stalled+province/5384575/story.html#ixzz1Xi4H5TiH
