More Proof of Disharmony

[Click on image to see larger version]

In a previous post, I cited some examples which are contrary to Ezra Levant's harmonious multicultural society.

Here is one more. I had posted this image several posts ago, but didn't really explain its significance.

If Toronto’s multiculturalism were such an asset, why then are people literally forming whole cities of people like them?

The Chinese in Markham and the Indians in Brampton have taken over whole suburbs in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to avoid this multicultuarl "haven" that Levant speaks about so glowingly.

What Happens When (If) Ezra Levant Has Accomplished His Goal of Dismantling the HRCs?

Christine Elliot, polled recently as the top choice for the Progressive Conservative leadership, has stated that abolishing the HRCs would "hand the Liberals the election on a silver platter." And that the PC party leaders should think twice about making the HRCs an issue in their campaign.

As always, the PC party is more liberal than anyone of us dare acknowledge.

But even if the HRCs were abolished (or fine-tuned), the political bodies of Canada, along with their ever-enlarging immigrant base, a base which Conservative Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney has said will not be reduced in the coming year, will find ways to install other HRC-type activities to fight "discrimination."

As I've stated before, the problem is not an isolated case of defunct HRCs. It is a much bigger problem of immigration and multiculturalism.

What is Ezra Levant willing to do about that?

Steve Paikin's Good-Hearted Naiveté

I wasn't going to post about Ezra Levant's recent interview at TVO. But, this uninteresting interview is now up on The International Free Press Society, which is elevating Levant's run-of-the-mill discussion as a "freedom of the press" and "freedom of expression" issue, as their website indicates.

In Levant's comments section at his website on his TVO post, there is praise after praise for his positions. There are also comments on Steve Paikin's (the TVO host) role as a devil's advocate.

Steve Paikin was no devil's advocate. He was expressing a genuine, naive and good-hearted concern, which I think many Canadians have, when he kept saying things like "you feel your identity is under attack" and especially this:

"Is it not beneficial to a society to try to reduce the amount of hate that we inspire through writings towards one another? Is that not an intrinsically good thing to do?"

Paiken’s well-taken point is: how do we deal with all these differences, these inequalities, these potentials for hurts and insults that is now so prevalent in Canadian society?

Levant was really quite unprepared to answer this question. He is stuck in his narrow fight of dismantling this fraudulent institution. And he never questions why it exists in the first place.

My answer, as I’ve indicated in many posts, is that as long as high levels of immigration of peoples of such divergent backgrounds from the traditional Canadian culture and society continues, there will be increasing governmental coercion to be "nice" to our neighbors. Dismantling the HRCs doesn’t get rid of the problem.

There is nothing wrong with being good neighbors, as Paiken innocently kept bringing up. But, if our whole governmental system is geared toward forcing people to be nice to each other, and specifically to the new comers of such divergent and different backgrounds, then we have to start asking how to stop this.

One obvious solution is to reduce (stopping is too much to ask) the number of immigrants that come into Canada.

If Levant had read my blog, and I don’t mean this facetiously since none of the other conservative bloggers and writers are bringing this up, and also read my most recent recommendation, Lawrence Auster’s The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, he would have known how to respond to Paiken.

In fact, I also invite Steve Paiken to this blog to get a clearer answer for the kinds of questions he was asking Levant.

Levant has an obligation to answer genuine questions like Paiken's and which ordinary Canadians are also asking. They sincerely want to live in harmony with their neighbors. He has entered into the fray of coercive governmental policies. He cannot avoid the issue of high immigration and the many HRC-type of activities the government is still performing.

The HRCs and Immigration: A Dual Problem

I just read Ezra Levant’s Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights. It is a clear, concise and very readable book, which any layman can pick up and learn from. It has a mixture of HRC case studies, factual and statistical information about the HRCs, and Levant’s suggestion for how to deal with this problem, which in his assessment is the complete dismantling of the Commissions.

Levant sees Canada as a society which has evolved from its racist past to what is now a tolerant, multicultural society, with many safeguards against racism, and which consequently doesn’t need the HRCs any longer.

These points deserve more attention, but suffice to say that the Canada of yonder years wasn’t nearly as racist as Levant paints it to be, and the Canada of recent years is far less harmoniously multicultural than he makes out. The recent Tamil protestors (by the thousands), the Lebanese dual citizens who are being shipped to Lebanon to vote in their elections, and Muslims filing HRC cases against MacLeans and Levant himself, expose the reality behind the harmonious multicultural Canada.

There is also a March 31, 2009 Globe and Mail article, where second generation visible minority immigrants feel less Canadian than even their parents, all this despite the country’s overwhelming attempt to accommodate them and their parents.

And a recent report by Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute showed the lack of leadership positions held by visible minority immigrants both in public and private institutions, implicitly indicating systemic discrimination in these institutions.

In the first one hundred pages of Shakedown, the majority of cases Levant gave as examples were filed by visible minorities, who felt they were not getting equal treatment because of their ethnic, racial or religious background.

In my preliminarily calculations of HRC cases filed, I’ve pointed out that the largest number came from visible minorities, not homosexuals, or women or even the disabled (except in Alberta). I’ve also shown that there is a correlation between the cases filed at the provincial HRCs by visible minorities, and the number of immigrants in that particular province.

This has led me to conclude that with increases in immigration, there is an increase in visible minorities, and a consequent increase in HRC cases filed by visible minorities.

Part of the problem of the HRCs is thus immigration.

So, what happens if Levant is successful in dismantling the HRCs? Will that reduce perceived discrimination against visible minorities? How will these minorities resolve these cases of (perceived) discrimination? How much will the government be involved in resolving these cases?

As long as there are large numbers of visible minorities, and as long as their largest source – a high immigration rate – is in place, I predict (although it is not hard to do because it has been happening for decades now) there will be endless governmental attempts, backed by special interest immigrant and visible minority groups, to make everyone "equal", and to remove "discrimination." One such example is the one I cited above, where visible minority groups are demanding that more visible minorities be placed in leadership position in both the public and corporate realms. How will this be achieved except through governmental coercion of a type of affirmative action?

Therefore, dismantling the HRCs without doing something about the biggest replenishing source of HRC applicants – immigrants - won't make the problem go away.

Levant's short-term goal of dismantling the HRCs should also include long-term solutions of immigration reform.

This will not be a popular position to take. But, to get a better understanding of the problem (and solutions), I strongly recommend that Levant read Lawrence Auster’s The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism.

To give Levant a glimpse of what this book contains, here is an excerpt:

Radical pluralism raises to a new level this threat to our liberty, since now the state will be called upon to overcome, not just the inequality of individuals, but the inequality of cultures. The inherent vastness and endlessness of such an enterprise matches the intrusiveness of the state power that must be exercised to achieve it. The signs of this new despotism are all around us:

• the de jure and de facto repression of speech dealing with racially sensitive subjects;

• the official classification and extension of privileges to people according to ethnic affiliation;

• the expansion of judicial and bureaucratic power to enforce racial quotas in more and more areas of society;

• the subjection of the American people to an unceasing barrage of propaganda telling us we are all brothers, that we must “respect all cultures,” etc., even while government policies are unleashing a wave of cultural diversity and ethnic chauvinism that is making spontaneous brotherly feeling a receding dream. In other words, the “family” that Governor Mario Cuomo keeps telling us we all belong to is really—the state.

In the Canadian context, Levant may dismantle the thoroughly disqualified, fraudulent, state-controlled HRCs, but as long as there is this “radical pluralism” of peoples maintained through immigration, we are still at the mercy of a coercive government to right the wrongs of inequality.

Islam As a Flase Religion

Fr. Zakaria Botros

Here is an interesting interview Jamie Glasov of Frontpagemag had with Coptic priest Fr. Zakaria Botros.

Glasov's main question is, "In what way can you summarize for us why you think that Islam is a 'false' religion?"

But, Glasov wants to get into rather lurid details - which seems to be his style - so I don't recommend reading the whole piece, at least I didn't.

Now, to Glasov's question, "In what way can you summarize for us why you think that Islam is a 'false' religion?", here is what Fr. Zakaria Botros had to say:

Fr. Zakaria Botros: Of all the religions [Islam] is the only one that has to threaten its adherents with death if they try to break away...Islam spread by force, by the edge of the sword, by fear, threats, and lurid enticements to the basest desires of man.  

Glasov: You always document your discussions with Islamic sources. Why do Muslim clerics and imams have such a difficulty discussing what Islam itself teaches and instead just attack you personally?

Fr. Zakaria Botros: I think the answer is obvious. The Islamic sources, the texts, speak for themselves. Muslims have no greater enemy than their own scriptures—particularly the Hadith and Sira—which constantly scandalize and embarrass Muslims...

So what can the sheikhs of Islam do? If they try to address the issue I raise based on Islam’s texts and sharia, they will have no choice but to agree...The only strategy left them, then, is to ignore all that I present and attack my person, instead.

And when well-meaning Muslims ask their leaders to respond to these charges, one of their favorite responses is to quote the Koran, where it says “Do not ask questions of things that will hurt you.”

This is why the issues I broach often traumatize Muslims—like a freshening slap across the face: a short, sharp, shock. The stubborn, who take it as an attack of "us versus them," irrespective of truths, just fume and plot to kill me; the other, more reasonable Muslims, who are really searching for the truth, end up waking up to the biggest hoax perpetrated on the human race in 1400 years, and many come to the ultimate Truth.

[Muslims' rationale for following the outragious commands in the Koran is] because Muhammad—"Allah’s prayers and blessings be upon him"—said so. Period. Who created such a practice? Muhammad. Why? Who knows...

[S]haria law’s totalitarian approach serves to brainwash Muslims, making them automatons that never question their religion, or, in the words of their own Koran, "Do not ask questions that may prove harmful to them."

I have maintained that Muslims clerics' unequivocal rigidity when it comes to Islam and the Koran, their inability to take any criticism at all, stems from their deep-seated insecurity and realization that theirs is a false religion. Maybe not all realize this, but there must be a point when a lucid thought passes through the mind of a more open-minded, intellectually honest cleric, who then has to hide his feeling (revelation) with more and more stringent demands. 

Jason Kenney Will Not Help Ezra Levant

Once again on the theme of HRCs, immigration and multiculturalism (or visible minorities), Jason Kenney, Conservative Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, was interviewed by the busy Steve Paiken last night on TVO (video now available).

According to this interview, Kenney has dedicated his fourteen years in politics, right up to is recent appointment in this ministerial post, on how to include immigrants and visible minorities into the Canadian society.

It is a laudable endeavor, except during some of Paiken's piercing questions, his ignorance, bad faith, and wishful thinking, come to the fore.

PAIKEN: Would you agree that there are too many Canadians who are coming to this country today from other countries where the respect for [our] liberal democratic values don’t exist, and they are not embracing them adequately as they come to Canada?

KENNEY: Look we can always point to isolated examples…

PAIKEN: But are they only isolated examples?

KENNEY: It’s hard to know, Steve, it’s hard to know.

And a little later on, Paiken impatiently asks:

PAIKEN: Is the family that may have just come here for example from Pakistan, that very much favors sharia law, but perhaps is too fundamentalist to be consistent with Canadian values, and not interested in embracing Western values? Is there too much of that happening?

KENNEY: There’s no easy index to say whether there is too much.

Kenney knows full well that there are plenty of indices out there to support Paiken's observations. This is the type of blind eye that has let the HRCs continue to flourish.

I'm afraid if Levant follows my proposal on how to combat the HRCs, Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, will not be a good ally.

The Legacy That Ezra Levant Has to Fight

My HRCs/immigration link gets even more interesting, like some kind of whodunit where the clues get more intriguing and the assessments more outrageous.

In my last post on the HRCs and immigration, I included all the other minority groups as a sub-set of the visible minority immigrant group, which bring more cases to the HRCs every year.

There is a double, triple, or quadruple whammy here.

For arguments sake, a visible minority immigrant woman can file TWICE (as a woman and as a visible minority). And THREE TIMES if she is also disabled or FOUR TIMES if she calls herself a homosexual.

I don't know what this means in terms of recompensations from the HRCs (and of course the tax-paying Canadians who are footing the bill). But, it could potentially double, triple or even QUADRUPLE her monetary demands.

Not only that, she will be forever a PROTECTED CLASS. No one will touch her for fear of almost guaranteed retaliation by her, the HRCs and the government.

This is the legacy that Ezra Levant has to be fighting to make a real difference.

My Calculation Was a Little Flawed

In my last post on my challenge to Ezra Levant, I wrote that one of the reasons for the increasing number of HRC cases is the increases in visible minority immigrants. Here is what I wrote:

Of course, there will always be women, the disabled, the homosexual, etc., who will bring forth new cases. But their numbers surely cannot be comparable to these new, adult, immigrants. (For starters, “new” women have to be born, and it takes at least eighteen years for these “new” women to file a case. New immigrants, on the otherhand, arrive as adults ready to file).

This is not quite accurate.

With increasing number of visible minority immigrants, all these other categories will also increase, albeit of the visible minority type:

- Visible minority homosexuals - the rest of the world is far more intolerant of homosexuals than Canada, or other Western countries. 

- Visible minority women, as spouses or other family members - I wonder how many visible minority women immigrate on their own, unless they are persecuted by honor killings?

- Handicapped visible minorities  - from the war fields in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and whatever war is being waged in whatever part of the planet. And also the sick with various serious illnesses like AIDS, tuberculosis, the Ebola virus, and so on.

My original calculation was too moderate.

A Challenge

I don't want to be an irritating gadfly. I do realize that people are busy, that they get overwhelmed by their current activities, and thinking takes time and the luxury of not being in the whirlwind of things.

But, I would like to challenge Ezra Levant on a couple of things - I know Mr. Levant is up to challenges.

First, can he give me alternate theories/ideas for how the HRCs keep increasing their cases each year? I propose that some of it has to do with the large number of new visible minority immigrants being admitted into Canada, who become an ever-replenishable pool of future complainants.

Of course, there will always be women, the disabled, the homosexual, etc., who will bring forth new cases. But their numbers surely cannot be comparable to these new, adult, immigrants. (For starters, “new” women have to be born, and it takes at least eighteen years for these “new” women to file a case. New immigrants, on the otherhand, arrive as adults ready to file).

My second challenge, once I've established the HRC-immigrant connection as tightly as possible - although I think it is pretty tight now - is this:

As I’ve shown above, one of the easiest ways to decrease the HRCs' powers and to eventually shut them down, would surely be to stop and/or to reduce incoming immigrants. (It will be much harder to stop the other groups, let alone reduce their numbers). 

Would Mr. Levant be prepared to make such a commitment towards immigration reform in Canada? He is already an outspoken and well-known leader, and would be a prime candidate.

My reasoning is simple. The HRCs made his life miserable for several years. This un-Canadian institution, as he himself has said, has no place in Canada.  

But, it is not enough to demand that the HRCs be shut down. They gain their power from their applicants, of which visible minorities and immigrants are an ever available (and increasing) pool. Thus, shutting down the HRCs and reforming immigration naturally go hand in hand.

Visible Minorities in the Greater Toronto Area

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What's the Difference Between Levant and the HRCs?

I wonder if Ezra Levant reads this blog? Or if he's just too busy doing his book tours and op-eds for the Toronto Star - yes, the leftist newspaper of Toronto (and Canada, really).

I admire fighters; it takes energy and commitment to go after your enemies, and to correct the wrong being done.

But, at the same time, it is important to understand what you're fighting for, and why.

I've always held Levant's freedom of speech and freedom of the press stand for his fight against the HRCs to be inadequate. It is understandable where he is coming from since he was attacked as a journalist, and for what he chose to publish in his magazine. But he has admitted that he doesn't find the HRC principles fundamentally wrong, except that they went over-board with their current cases. 

Here is an excerpt from a piece Levant recently posted on his website titled, "Human rights activist speaks to multicultural forum on behalf of Metis host" which tells us more of his position:

I don't think about the ethnic or racial details of my friends -- unless it specifically comes up for some reason. And it generally doesn't come up -- unless some foolish political correctness demands that it come up, in the form of racial quotas or the like.

[H]uman rights commissions judge everyone based on those irrelevant criteria. They immediately assign you your political and legal status based on your race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. They ignore Martin Luther King's call to be judged by the "content of our character, not the colour of our skin".

The problem isn't that the HRCs are racist (they may well be, I don't know the inner workings of their staff and supporters). The problem is that the cases filed with the HRCs are categorized by groups deemed to be vulnerable to discrimination. The whole point of the HRCs is to protect such "minority" groups from majority group discrimination. They are set up to rule on differences, or at least complaints made by those "different" who want to be treated the same as everyone else.

So, what makes Levant any different from the HRCs? Both seem to believe in a neutral, equal society, where men and women, black and whites, Muslims and Christians, gays and straights, the old and the young, are all equal, and live in the multicultural harmony that Levant hopes is Canada.

As I pointed out in my previous post, about one half of those protected groups are visible minorities. They are protected against discrimination from equal access to employment, housing, services, and a host of other things.

Ontario's minorities filed about 1/3 more complaints to the HRC than did Alberta between 2007 and 2008.The highest number of complaints in Ontario came from visible minorities (39% vs. 18% for Alberta). Ontario has also almost twice the number of visible minorities as Alberta.

Immigrants contribute large numbers to the visible minorities' pool, as I showed in my previous posts [1, 2]. With the increasing acceptance of immigrants , there will be an increasing number of visible minorities, and an increasing number of HRC cases. 

Visible minorities, those people that he doesn’t want to put into "racial quotas", are changing Ezra Levant’s Canada. They are not beholden to the founders and creators of Canada, unlike Levant. The fair and just society that Levant makes speeches about is changing through the unfair and vindictive HRCs that he’s trying to reform.

Part of the fuel that keeps the HRCs burning are people whose entry into Canada Levant, and Jason Kenney, need to find ways to reduce to avoid the inevitable, negative changes to society and culture that Levant is already bemoaning. This includes his cherished freedom of speech, which allows him to still speak the way he does, but which could change for the worse.

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Here are some facts about the Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia HRC cases between 2007 and 2008:

Ontario New Complaints to the HRC:
3,491 (filed by 0.03% of the total population)
A 49% increase from previous year

% Breakdown of complaints
- Visible minority: (an amalgam of race, place of origin, ethnicity, ancestry and creed): 38.8%
Race being highest at 18.2%

- Disability: 27.6%

Ontario visible minorities: 22.8% of Ontario population
Toronto visible minorities: 46.9% of Toronto population

Source: Ontario Human Rights Commission 2007-2008 Annual Report
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Alberta New Complaints to the HRC:
680 (filed by 0.02% of the total population)
A 4% increase from previous year

% Breakdown of complaints
- Visible minority: (an amalgam of race, place of origin, ethnicity, ancestry and creed): 18%
Race & Ancestry highest at 8% each

- Disability: 38%

- Gender: 20%

Alberta visible minorities: 13.9%

Source: Alberta Human Rights Commission, Annual Review, April 1 2007 - March 31 2008 (pdf)
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British Columbia New Complaints to the HRC:
1,053 (filed by 0.02% of the total population)

% Breakdown of complaints
- Visible minority (an amalgam of race, place of origin, ethnicity, ancestry and creed): 41%
Race highest at 12%

- Disability - 20%

B.C. Visible Minorities: 24.8%

Source: B.C. Human Rights Tribunal Annual Report, 2007-2008 (pdf)
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Update on Immigration and Visible Minorities

Here is a report by the Bellissimo Law group (immigration lawyers, so they should be happy) about the commitment to immigration by Jason Kenney, minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, for 2009:

Canadian minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, has great plans to welcome between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents.

On November 28, 2008, Minister Kenney announced that he is committed to his immigration program to balance Canadian's [sic] economic, humanitarian and family reunification goals. Minister Kenney plans to include up to 156,600 immigrants in the economic category; 71,000 in the family category; and 37,400 in the humanitarian category.

In 2007, projecting for 2008, another law firm, the Campell Cohen law firm, announced that:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced...that the target for permanent residents will increase by 15000 in the upcoming year [of 2008]...

In 2007 Canada plans to admit between 240 000 to 265 000 permanent residents, up from a range of 225 000 to 250 000 this calendar year.

So, the projected acceptance went up for 2008, and remained high for 2009 (higher than for 2006), despite a more conservative government, and a minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism who plans to rewrite the citizenship test because Canada "can't afford to be passive about the challenges of integration."

If Jason Kenney is still concerned about the integration of immigrants, after so many years of immigration, shouldn't he be questioning what it is about these newer immigrants that makes them less likely to integrate, rather than rewriting the citizenship test? 

I hope Ezral Levant is also able to help out Kenney with these questions.