DISCARD NO MORE CANADIANS
In the past few weeks, the “Idle No More” movement has articulated Canada’s abandonment of its Aboriginal population. Its efforts have definitely caught the public’s attention. But to increase their numbers and their strength, Aboriginals should consider a coalition with Canada’s unemployed and underemployed mainstream population. In varying degrees, Ottawa has abandoned all of them and their interests with its high immigration policy and its Employment Equity laws.
Aboriginals have chosen the slogan “Idle no More” to describe their refusal to accept the 75 to 90% unemployment many face on Reserves. Slogans for this coalition of “The Abandoned” could be phrases like “Madness No More” (to express the senselessness of high immigration), “Discard Us No More” (to show the treatment of Canadian-born as disposables) or “Holocaust No More” (to indicate Ottawa’s “burnt-offering” of Canadian lives to satisfy the immigration lobby).
Once again, we point out that many Canadians do not object to some immigration, but they oppose the 250,000 per year intake that has existed since 1991.
For all Canadian-born, whether Aboriginal or mainstream, slogans such as “Hire an Immigrant”,”Recognize Credentials” and “Employment Equity” have missed the point about unemployment in Canada. “Employment Equity” has probably caused the most damage. Employment Equity laws were supposed to grant hiring preference to Aboriginals (as well as to Canada’s women, its Disabled and its Visible Minorities). However, in comparison to Aboriginals and the Disabled, these laws have given greater preference to Visible Minority immigrants, most of whom Canada had no economic need for and therefore should never have brought here. To add to the problem, these Visible Minority immigrants have displaced large numbers of Canadian-born, particularly white males. One example of the discarding and displacement is the 14% (and probably closer to 25%) unemployment rate in Canadian youth.
Employment Equity (a copy of Affirmative Action in the U.S.) was introduced in Canada in 1986 on the recommendation of a report chaired by Rosalie Abella, at that time an Ontario judge. She is currently a member of Canada’s Supreme Court. Her report resulted in Employment Equity laws to promote Preferential Hiring in Canada’s public sector. That campaign has since been followed by a similar campaign in Canada’s private sector. The result of her work has been that probably hundreds of thousands of Visible Minorities have been granted preference in hiring.
In a reply to Abella, in 1998, Canadian academic Dr. Martin Loney published “The Pursuit of Division : Race, Gender and Preferential Hiring in Canada”. The main point that Martin Loney made in the book was that Abella lacked empirical evidence for her conclusions. For example, Loney stated that some visible minority groups were actually doing better than white Canadians, so it was incorrect to conclude that Visible Minorities suffered from “systemic discrimination”.
Furthermore, many Canadians who are aware of the effects of her report would say that Employment Equity (EE) legislation has created a much more serious problem because it has institutionalized “systemic discrimination” against Canadian-born white males.
In summary, the report done by Rosalie Abella has created a Canadian Holocaust. Its inaccurate conclusions have been used to elicit guilt from Canadians, to justify Canada’s high immigration intake and to intimidate those who question that high intake. Its effects may dwarf the effects of the European Holocaust which Abella’s parents escaped. For the record, Abella was born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Stuttgart, Germany on July 1, 1946. Her family came to Canada as refugees in 1950.
To make up for the damage that Employment Equity (EE) laws have done, Canada needs to conduct a sweeping investigation to determine the number of people who have been hired because of these ill-considered laws. The legislation has been implemented by not only federal, provincial and municipal governments, but also by much of Canada’s private sector.
As an introduction, we present a few examples (from data provided by The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat) of the effects of EE in Canada’s federal civil service.
As of March 31 1999, about thirteen years after EE laws began, the Public Service of Canada (PSC) employed 178,340 people. Of that total, 91,856 were women, 5124 were Aboriginals, 8137 were people with disabilities, and 10,557 were persons in a Visible Minority Group. No data was available to show the number of women and other groups employed before 1999, but the fact that women in 1999 comprised over half of the total number of federal employees is striking. However, it was already evident that Visible Minorities (most of whom were probably newly-arrived) were being granted more preference than Aboriginals and the Disabled, most of whom were also probably Canadian-born.
As of March 31, 2011, the Public Service of Canada (PSC) employed 202,631. Of that total, 111,051 were women, 9486 were Aboriginal, 11,388 were Persons with Disabilities, and 22,998 were Visible Minorities.
It is worth noting that in the 1999–2011 period, the PSC increased in size by 24,291. It is even more worth noting that Visible Minority employees increased by 12,441, about half of the total increase. This significant increase is probably a result of a concerted effort by the Public Service of Canada (the PSC) to hire Visible Minorities. It should be noted that the Visible Minority hiring is possibly even larger than that reported because Visible Minority employees, in applying for a PSC job, do not have to declare that they belong to a Visible Minority.
Again, the raw numbers also show that Visible Minorities increased their representation much more than Aboriginals and Persons with Disabilities. .
Many Canadians would agree that the PSC should make a very strong effort to hire Canada’s Aboriginals and its Disabled. However, many would also say that giving preference to Visible Minorities (VM) who are foreign -born. compounds the first mistake of bringing these immigrants here. Most Canadians correctly believe that access to a job is an essential part of being born here. Similarly, they think that Canada should not be acting as an employment agency for the world’s unemployed. By doing this, Canada inevitably denies jobs to Canadian-born.
Another major concern that Canadians have about Employment Equity is security. It is common sense that Canada should be very cautious about people who come from countries which are interested in acquiring secret, strategic information about Canadian high tech and resource businesses, or about Canada and its NATO allies. But there is little evidence that Canada has exercised caution is employing these people in sensitive departments.
For example, it is worthwhile noting that the percentage of Visible Minorities (VM) in departments such as Citizenship and Immigration is high. This department makes major immigration policy decisions, issues visas, and is supposed to uphold the interests of Mainstream Canada. Yet, the percentage of Visible Minorities is 18.8% (850 of a total of 4514 employees). How much is the presence of these VM employees stifling the expression of very real concerns that mainstream Canadian Citizenship and Immigration employees have?
In the Passport Department, where fraud has been a serious problem in the past, the percentage of Visible Minorities is 19.5% (478 of a total of 2447 employees). Anyone who has visited the Richmond, B.C. Passport Office will be shocked to see that the staff is overwhelmingly probably newly-arrived Chinese. Has this increased the potential for fraud?
On the Immigration and Refugee Board, where crucial decisions are being made about whether someone is to be granted refugee status and eventual permission to bring in very large numbers of potentially fake relatives, the percentage of Visible.Minorities is 26.8% (223 of a total of 833 employees). Has anyone asked a question about this?
The percentage of Visible Minorities in Human Resources and Skills Development may seem small at 12.7% , but note that this translates to 2935 of a total of 23,092 employees. This large number is part of a department which allowed close to 400,000 Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW’s) to work here in 2012. In the past few months, Canadians have learned that this department has permitted Mainland Chinese miners to be stealthily imported to fill TFW jobs which several hundred Canadian applicants were denied. This case should make clearer the point that employers are probably widely abusing the TFW program. Have some employees with ethnic connections to these employers assisted some of these employers?
The percentage of Visible Minorities employed in the Canada Border Services Agency is also 12.7%, but the raw number is high (1750 out of a total of 13,831 employees). This department is responsible for investigating immigration fraud. It is no exaggeration to say that immigration fraud is rampant, mainly because the backgrounds of most of the immigrants who enter Canada are not being checked. We know that even when fraud is reported, this department does not even bother to investigate a very large amount of it. Has this department ever asked whether the loyalties of some of its employees are more to their country of origin than to Canada?
In summary, a sweeping investigation of the entire Employment Equity program would give Canadians a much better picture of what has occurred and probably produce convincing evidence that the Visible Minority section of EE should never have been implemented and should be ended ASAP.
