CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy

This report, commissioned by Senator Woo, essentially argues for more services and support for Canadian expatriates. While it contains some useful comparisons of provincial health care coverage and non-coverage, as well as provincial election regulations, it is disappointingly light on measures of connection to Canada, whether passport issued to Canadians abroad (no recent public stats apparently) or non-resident taxation (less than 32,000 in 2021).

In terms of the specific recommendations below, my thoughts are as follows:

• Always good to have better and more comprehensive data, along with academic research. For the latter, important to have range of perspectives, from this stating the case for more services (as the report does) to more critical voices.
• On the various recommendations for centralized information for “all information relevant to the Canadian diaspora,” this understates the complexity of compiling and maintaining such a data that incorporates federal and provincial information. The argument for the need appears more theoretical than based upon public opinion research.
• As to the needs for a strategy, hard to argue against that but the challenge, as we seen in so many areas, strategies without serious implementation are more photo ops and virtue signalling than meaningful.
• With respect to consular service, one needs to start at first principles in terms of the obligations and limits to consular service to manage expectations and costs. In general, Canada has been generous in recent crises in terms of family members and permanent residents, even in cases of long-term expatriates with minimal to no current connection to Canada
• More nutty are the arguments regarding healthcare coverage, mental health awareness, and the medical care at home and abroad sections, especially given the strains our healthcare system in Canada is facing. Expats planning to return to Canada are responsible for reinstating coverage and the various provincial websites are easy to find and understand. Is it really a Canadian government responsibility to help expats deal with mental health issues among diaspora communities? There is some merit in studying the impact of the return of expats to Canada on healthcare given that they have for the most part not paid Canadian and provincial taxes but the issue of Canadians seeking medical services abroad is a completely separate issue as these are paid by individuals, not taxpayers.
• On tax policy, unclear what exactly is the issue and what are they trying to advocate. Canadian taxation is based on residence and most expats don’t pay Canadian non-resident taxes although some who maintain property in Canada do pay property tax.
• Expat voting is a classic case where the policy arguments are divorced from reality. The report makes the specious comparison between overall voting rates between Canadian and non-residents but not the more telling on that only 55,000 non-resident voters registered, a drop in the bucket compared to the overall number of around three million adult expats. The same concerns regarding the cost of maintaining an updating a database on federal and provincial voting regulations apply. And suggesting electronic voting from abroad when we do not have it in Canada, not to mention the potential cost and security risks, even more hard to justify.
• The last three recommendations – economic development engagement, chambers of commerce, and cultivating the diaspora – already happen to some extent in every embassy that I had worked in. No doubt, could be improved and strengthened.

Overall, the author has an overly optimistic take on the interest and willingness of long-term Canadian expatriates to advance Canadian interests. The vast majority are living their lives in their country of residence, contributing to that country’s economy and society, with relatively few highly engaged in advancing Canadian interests. Those are largely known to embassies and consulates and Canadian interest groups. Again, more could be done but given limited resources and little hard evidence to demonstrate effectiveness, the case is weak.

Source: CANADIANS ABROAD: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy

Visible minorities have difficulty accessing the labour market

While some interesting comparisons between Quebec and the rest of Canada, some of the methodology is odd. Why pick the 15-24 cohort given than many are in college or university rather than the 25-34 cohort which I and others use to avoid that issue.

While the general contrast between visible minorities and not visible minorities is valid, it ignores some of the equally significant differences between visible minority groups.

Still interesting to note the persistence of gaps between Quebec and Canada:

…More and more newcomers to the job market will be members of a visible minority. The case of young Canadian-born visible minorities merits special attention, with the goal of preventing their socioeconomic exclusion and the potential consequences for social cohesion.

In a context where Quebec and the rest of Canada rely on immigration to address the labour shortage, logic would dictate that we first realize the full potential of those already present. The integration into the workforce of Canadian-born individuals from ethnocultural minority groups, particularly the young, must be among the priorities of policymakers so as to avoid a situation where integration difficulties are passed on from one generation to the next. Failing this, a growing share of the population risks being marginalized.

Governments, the business community and all relevant stakeholders must work together on this in order to permanently eliminate the barriers hindering the economic integration of these young individuals and preventing them from fully contributing to the progress of society.

Source: Visible minorities have difficulty accessing the labour market

Keller: The Trudeau government’s promise of 3.87 million new homes is next to impossible

I and others have been noting that time needed to increase housing means further revisions to the number of immigrants, temporary and permanent, is needed:

…An extraordinarily high share of our national wealth is already invested in housing rather than in productive business assets. In 2022, 37.9 per cent of Canada’s gross fixed capital formation – investment in assets – was tied up in dwellings. That’s the highest level in the OECD.

And the Trudeau government’s unreachable building target may aim too low. To achieve affordability solely through more housing, CMHC last year said the number of homes needed could be almost six million. CIBC economist Benjamin Tal pegs the shortfall at closer to seven million.

The logical conclusion is that we can’t build our way to affordability, at least not any time soon. Ottawa has to lean harder on the demand side of the equation. That means significantly reversing the unprecedented spike in the number of temporary residents. Population growth has to come down – way down.

Source: The Trudeau government’s promise of 3.87 million new homes is next to impossible

Yakabuski: Ottawa’s noble plan to fast-track francophone immigrants seems doomed to fail

Sadly likely true:

….Still, it is far from clear Ottawa’s francophone immigration policy can achieve its ambitious goals. For starters, it pits Quebec and the federal government against each other in seeking to attract newcomers from the same (and rather limited) pool of French-speaking immigrants. Quebec chooses its own economic immigrants and puts a premium on French skills.

What’s more, many francophones who immigrate to another Canadian province may end up moving to Quebec soon after they arrive here. Many may find that their image of a bilingual country where francophones can thrive in any province is shattered upon arrival, and opt to relocate to Quebec.

More to the point, given Canada’s rising overall immigration numbers, Ottawa would need to adopt even more aggressive targets to stabilize the francophone population outside Quebec. Indeed, the House of Commons official languages committee last week recommended a 12-per-cent target for French-speaking immigrants outside Quebec this year, rising to 20 per cent by 2036, “to rebalance the demographic weight of francophones in Canada.”

Alas, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon is not likely to run out of ammunition any time soon.

Source: Ottawa’s noble plan to fast-track francophone immigrants seems doomed to fail

StatsCan: Employment by choice and necessity among Canadian-born and immigrant seniors

Noteworthy difference between immigrant and non-immigrant seniors as well as among different visible minority groups:

As Canada’s population gets older and life expectancy keeps increasing, Canadian-born and immigrant seniors may alleviate downward pressures on the overall employment rate through their involvement in the labour market. 

Many seniors work past their mid-60s for various reasons. Some find it necessary to keep working because of inadequate retirement savings, mortgage payments, unforeseen expenses, or the responsibility to support children and other family members in Canada or abroad. Others choose to work to provide a sense of personal fulfillment, stay active and remain engaged. 

Working by choice rather than necessity may have important implications for the well-being of seniors. Furthermore, data on employment by choice and necessity may help employers and policy makers understand the factors that influence seniors’ retirement decisions.

To shed light on this issue, this article uses data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and examines the degree to which Canadian-born and immigrant seniors aged 65 to 74 worked by choice or necessity in 2022.^Note 

One in five seniors aged 65 to 74 worked in 2022—almost half of them by necessity

Of all Canadian-born and immigrant seniors aged 65 to 74, 21% were employed in 2022. Nine percent reported working by necessity and 12% reported working by choice. Those working by necessity represented 351,000 individuals that year.^Note 

Immigrant seniors were more likely than their Canadian-born counterparts to work by necessity in 2022. Of all immigrant men aged 65 to 74, 15% reported working by necessity in 2022 (Table 1). The corresponding percentage was 9% for Canadian-born men.^Note  Immigrant women (9%) were also more likely than Canadian-born women (6%) to report working by necessity.

….The degree to which immigrants worked by necessity in 2022 varied across population groups. About 20% of Black, Filipino or South Asian immigrant men reported working by necessity that year, compared with 8% of Chinese immigrant men and 12% of White immigrant men. Black immigrant women (12%) and Filipino immigrant women (13%) were also more likely than Chinese immigrant women (6%) to report working by necessity…

Source: Employment by choice and necessity among Canadian-born and immigrant seniors

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