The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney has just announced the cutting of funding to the Settlement Service of the Canadian Arab Federation alleging CAF promotes terror. According to a release by CAF “This arbitrary decision made by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, under the Harper leadership is an attempt to silence any dissenting voice and is being used as disciplinary action for CAFs political stand which is contrary to their own. Furthermore, this is a warning to other non-profit, anti-racist organizations not to criticize members of the Canadian government or they may face a similar fate.”

In addition, the Minister is responsible for denying entry to Canada George Galloway, a well known MP from the UK. Galloway has been deemed “inadmissible on national security grounds” and been denied entry into Canada where he was scheduled to speak at a series of public forums.

The banning of George Galloway from Canada is unfounded and unjustified – it is wrong to block speakers from Canada for political convenience. Banning George Galloway from entering Canada demonstrates that the Conservative Canadian government does not respect our rights as citizens to dissent or have dissenting views, peacefully organize and advocate around a particular viewpoint or political position. George Galloway should be allowed into Canada, and allowed to freely express himself during his visit.

TAKE ACTION:

1) CAF urges you to call, fax and e-mail Minister Kenney in addition to e-mailing your local MP to express utrage of this unprecedented decision to cut funding to the Canadian Arab Federation.

2) Contact Minister Kenney and your local MP to condemn the decision to deny Galloway entry and for censuring free speech of those with a dissenting opinion and political ideology.

Contact Jason Kenney:

Constituency Office:
1168 137 Ave SE
Calgary, AB
T2J 6T6
P. 403-225-3480
F. 403-225-3504

Ottawa Office:
325 East Block
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
P. 613-992-2235
F. 613-992-1920

Email: kennej@parl.gc.ca

Join other Asian Canadian union members at a meeting of the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance to discuss plans for Asian Heritage Month. Bring your favourite dish to share for dinner, if you can. Also, hear about the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF) and other upcoming activities.

The Asian Canadian Labour Alliance provides a forum for Asian Canadian union members to connect, encourages the increased participation of Asian Canadian union members in the labour movement, and works to strengthen the relationship between labour and our Asian Canadian communities.

For more information about the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance, or for more detailed directions to the meeting, please contact: Lorene Oikawa at 604-291-9611 or lorene.oikawa@bcgeu.ca

Download the poster: Asian Canadian Labour Alliance Meeting & Potluck Dinner (pdf)

The Changing the Canvas initiative of the CLC highlights the experiences of immigrants of colour in the workforce. Their stories remind us that real people live behind the statistics about racism, barriers to employment, chronic poverty, and failures with how Canada recognizes foreign credentials or prior learning assessments.

Click to visit changingthecanvas.org.

On July 16 approximately 325 PSAC-UTE members from across the country gathered in Vancouver at the Union of Taxation Employees National Convention. UTE members debated the budget and resoutions, heard presentations from speakers – including John Gordon who spoke about the “Make Poverty History” campaign and the campaign to introduce a national drug card – and conducted elections. Betty Bannon was re-elected as UTE National President, Pamela Abbot was re-elected Regional Vice President – Pacific, and Robert Hume as Alternate RVP – Pacific.

• Visit ute-sei.org for more on the UTE National Convention.

On July 23rd, the 2008 Komagata Maru Reconciliation Dinner was held at the Bombay Palace in Surrey. PSAC BC, lead by Regional Council Racially Visible Coordinator, Sargy Chima, and other members of the racially  visible and human rights caucuses participated in this event, which marked the 100th anniversary of the Continuous Journey Act – a shameful part of Canada’s history which lead to the infamous Komagata Maru incident in Vancouver.

In May 1914, the Komagata Maru sailed into English Bay from Hong Kong with 376 passengers aboard – 340 Sikhs, 12 Hindus, and 24 Muslims. In 1908, the Canadian Government had passed the Continuous Journey Act, which stipulated that immigrants could only enter Canada directly from their country of birth and with $200 on their person. This was impossible for immigrants from India, as the Government had forced Canadian Pacific to stop its steamship service between Vancouver and Calcutta. After sitting in port for two months, the ship was forced to leave Vancouver Harbour as the Canadian Government adamantly refused passengers the right to land in Canada.

• Visit wikipedia.org for more about the Komagata Maru.
• Visit anniversaries07.ca for more about the anniversaries of change project.

Continue reading for some photos of both events …

Cheers to Jennie Chu, AGR 20044 / BC Human Rights Committee, for the banquet photos!

OTTAWA — Gurcharan Singh Gill’s grandfather was a stout man – and could just barely see over the rails of the Komagata Maru when it docked in Burrard Inlet 94 years ago.

Despite that, Daljit Singh, the personal assistant to the man who led the voyage, was proud as he looked out over the water to Vancouver after a month-long voyage that began in Asia, Mr. Gill said.

But after a two-month standoff in British Columbia, the Komagata Maru was turned away, marking one of the most shameful chapters in Canadian immigration history.

Now, the federal government is preparing to apologize for its exclusion of 376 would-be immigrants from India.

Jason Kenney, the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, has announced that the Conservative government is working on an official apology for the Komagata Maru incident of 1914. Sources said an apology is coming soon, but the government is still deciding the forum in which the announcement will be made – the House of Commons or a community event. The apology is also expected to be accompanied by commemorative grants of $2.5-million.

Mr. Gill, 83, one of only a handful of descendants of Komagata Maru passengers in Canada, welcomed the apology on behalf of his grandfather.

“If they do it with a full heart, it is all right,” he said yesterday from his home in Surrey, B.C.

Meanwhile, the president of the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation, which has been leading the charge to have a formal apology issued to all Indo-Canadians, said he was pleased the federal government is finally acknowledging a past wrong, but said the B.C. government should follow suit.

“I think this is a great day in our history. This should have been done long before,” said Sahib Thind.

B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal said the federal apology will be made on behalf of all Canadians.

The Komagata Maru, a Japanese steam liner, arrived in Vancouver on May 23, 1914, during a period when the government of Canada had severely limited the rights of Indians living in the country. It had invoked, in 1908, the now infamous Continuous Passage Act, which stated that Indians would have to come to Canada via a direct passage from India, something that was nearly impossible.

The ship carried 376 passengers – most of them Sikhs – hoping to move to Canada, and left from Hong Kong in April of that year.

After a two-month standoff in British Columbia, only about 20 passengers who already had resident status were legally allowed to stay in the country. Canadian authorities turned the rest away, and the Komagata Maru had to sail back to Asia.

When it arrived in Calcutta in September of 1914, passengers demanded to remain in the city, but were forced to another part of India, then controlled by Britain.

A riot ensued, in which police killed 20 people.

The Komagata Maru incident is recognized today as one of the most egregious examples of the discriminatory immigration laws in Canada in the early 20th century. Indo-Canadian groups have for years called on the government to issue a formal apology.

“Our government is working toward an official apology for the Komagata Maru incident,” Mr. Kenney said this weekend. “This will flow directly from the Prime Minister’s recognition of the tragic nature of the Komagata Maru incident, as well as the spirit of the Historical Recognition Programs, whose goal is to ensure that immigration restrictions are properly recognized and commemorated.”

Since taking office, the Conservative government has moved to recognize formally or apologize for numerous chapters in Canada’s history. In 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for a head tax on immigrants from China between 1885 and 1923.

Canadian governments have also apologized to Italians, Japanese and Ukrainians, among other groups, for internment and expulsion during the First and Second World Wars.

Such acknowledgment doesn’t appear confined to Canadian borders. A Conservative backbencher is pushing for the government to recognize the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s as an act of genocide by the Soviet regime.

Yesterday, the Komagata Maru decision was hailed as an important step.

“Members of the Indo-Canadian community from all backgrounds, especially Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus, thank the Prime Minister and the government of Canada for acknowledging this very sad chapter in Canadian history,” said Naresh Raghubeer, national policy director of the Canada India Foundation.

“Acknowledging the past is an important step toward building a positive and constructive relationship between Canada and India, and Indo-Canadians and the wider Canadian community.”

Specifically, I would like to understand your views on what it means to be living in Vancouver, Canada as part of the Sikh diaspora. Further, I would like to understand how the political violence in Punjab, India has impacted you, your relationships and your position in the world, as a member of the Sikh diaspora in Vancouver.

This study will be pioneering in the field of Marriage and Family Therapy because this topic area has not been studied before. Bringing forth the unique experiences of the Sikh diaspora will be informative for those working in the mental health field. It will also allow the unique stories and voices of Sikh diaspora to take space in academia, where these voices can be acknowledged, and understood.

I am looking for potential volunteers for my study and hope that you will consider participating. If you wish to participate you must meet the following criteria:

1. You must be born outside of India, to parents who were born in India.
2. You must have experienced (first hand or second hand) some of the events affecting the Sikh community in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
3. You must reside in Vancouver.
4. You must self identify as a Sikh.

Participation in this study would be completely voluntary and you may withdraw at any time if you choose to participate. Your confidentiality is of utmost concern, and measures have been put into place to ensure that your confidentiality is protected.

I would be happy to discuss this with you in detail on the phone. The format of this study will be interviews, where I would be interviewing you for 90 to 120 minutes.

If you are interested in this study, please phone/email me. I will give you further information at that time, and also answer any questions or concerns you may have.

Kiran S.K. Arora
kiransarora@gmail.com
315.383.5400 – Syracuse, N.Y.
604.719.1871 – Vancouver, B.C.

Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Justice Canada is a “very poisonous, toxic department” that drives visible minorities out the door, says a high-profile former Justice lawyer.

Mark Persaud, who left Justice in 2003, told a Senate committee the atmosphere during the decade he worked there was rife with “overt racism and intimidation of employees.”

His testimony came on the heels of charges by a senator and the Public Service Alliance of Canada that racism is blocking visible minorities from being properly represented within the federal public service. Nova Scotia Senator Donald Oliver, who is black, bluntly asserted at Monday night’s Senate committee meeting that “it is racism that is preventing visible minorities from progressing in the public service.”

And Ed Cashman, a PSAC vice-president, told senators that racism is “the elephant in the room” that nobody in government wants to talk about.

The Public Service Commission recently revealed that the recruitment rate of visible minorities fell last year despite an increase in hiring overall. Visible minorities now make up 8.6 per cent of federal employees, below their workplace representation of 10.4 per cent, based on the 2001 census.

According to the Canada Public Service Agency, the representation of visible minorities in the public service has nearly doubled over the past decade. Between 2001 and 2006, their numbers expanded by almost 6,000, the agency says, bringing the total to more than 15,000.

“We’re still not meeting targets, but we have made improvements,” Karen Ellis, the agency’s head of workforce and workplace renewal, said in December. “I think there is a lot of goodwill there,” Ms. Ellis said. “It’s a matter of getting the focus and energy going and bringing it into the planning in a deliberate way from the start.”

Justice officials say they’re doing better than most departments. Visible minorities represent 10.6 per cent of the department’s 4,500-member workforce, including 231 visible minority lawyers.

Visible minorities apply for government jobs in disproportionate numbers, and have better qualifications on average than white applicants, said Mr. Cashman. “Yet disproportionately, they don’t get their fair share of jobs.” Racism, he said, is the “primary explanation. We’re a racist nation, and it’s time we addressed that.”

Mr. Oliver and Mr. Cashman said the private sector has done a better job of recruiting visible minorities than the public service. In the banking industry, for example, visible minorities make up 22 per cent of the workforce, Mr. Cashman said.

Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, seemed flummoxed by questions about the role racism plays in holding back visible minority applicants.

But she told the committee the public service’s corporate culture remains a barrier. “Far too often we have to lead employers reluctantly along the path of employment equity,” she said. “Too often, departments see it as another burdensome requirement that has to be met.”

But Mr. Persaud, who fled his native Guyana for Canada in 1983, said many visible minority lawyers aren’t even called for an interview when they apply for Justice Canada jobs.

Mr. Persaud, now president and CEO of the Canadian International Peace Project, said visible minority lawyers he worked with left one by one in frustration. “The primary reason was we thought there were no proper opportunities as visible minorities for us to be promoted equitably and fairly,” he told the Senate committee on human rights.

Mr. Persaud, a former chairman of the Liberal party’s committee on multiculturalism who defected to the Conservatives a year ago, conceded “things may have changed” since he left Justice in 2003.

However, he said, two Justice staff members told him last week that about 10 visible minority lawyers had recently left the department. “I was told there is still a culture in there that creates a lot of unhappiness and is creating a problem in terms of retention.”

Mr. Oliver, a lifelong campaigner against racism who was appointed to the Senate by Brian Mulroney in 1990, made headlines in 2004 when he accused the public service of racism. Little has changed, he said yesterday. “For people to pretend that racism is not here and doesn’t exist, it’s ridiculous. It’s time we started to be realistic. Once we face that realism, maybe then we can begin to resolve the problem.”

Nominations for the racially visible delegate are open to racially visible members in good standing who have self-identified. Please ensure you have completed the self-identification form.

Please see the attached nomination form (pdf) which may be faxed to the REVP office at (604) 430-0194.