Manufacturing public opinion

Very often we are asked to have our say on matters of state policy, such as the ongoing consultations with the public by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. All levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – always stress the importance of feedback to government proposals in changing policies or regulations. Whether useless or effective, duplicitous or sincere, these public consultations create another layer in the decision-making process, in addition to our elected Parliament and local councils, and the army of technocrats in the government bureaucracy.

Canada Immigration, for example, conducts public consultations to “generate greater public understanding of the difficult decisions involved in managing a global immigration system.” According to its recent press release, “There are competing visions and diverging goals for the future of the immigration program, and there are no easy answers. Engaging stakeholders and the broader public is key to CIC’s development of an overall strategy for Canada moving forward.”

According to a press release from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the purpose
of immigration consultations is to "seek feedback on immigration levels, including
the appropriate level of immigration for Canada, and the most suitable mix between
economic, family class and protected persons." Click link to view "Many changes to
immigration under Jason Kenney,"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UXER3dLjto

The purpose of Canada Immigration’s ongoing public consultations is to seek feedback on immigration issues, including the appropriate level of immigration for Canada, and the most suitable mix among economic, family, and refugee and humanitarian classes.

Are we really that ignorant to be duped by the current Conservative government that our input matters in policy decision-making?

Early this year, Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decided to cancel out all immigration applications submitted prior to February 27, 2008. Close to 280,000 applicants are affected by this decision. Minister Kenney rationalized his decision by arguing that the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) Program is hampering Canada’s ability to respond rapidly to changing labour market needs. Kenney said: “Having to process applications that are as many as eight years out of date reduces our ability to focus on new applicants with skills and talents that our economy needs today.” This was a draconian shift in government policy, yet did Canada Immigration ask for our feedback before they decided to go ahead with their new policy?

Prior to Minister Kenney’s decision to close the door to these early immigration applications under the FSW program, he also imposed a moratorium on the sponsorship of parents and grandparents, thus denying new permanent residents the opportunity to bring their families to Canada. With a stroke of the pen, Kenney is rewriting the objective of family reunification under the existing law and making it even more difficult. Was there a consultation with the public, especially those affected by the change in policy?

Last July, Minister Kenney put a temporary hold on all new applications under the federal skilled worker and investor program until July 0f 2013. Kenney said he needed to “reset the button” in deciding on the moratorium on Canada’s skilled labour program. This decision was necessary, Kenney said, to enable the government to develop an effective backlog elimination strategy. In addition, Minister Kenney also reduced health care benefits – including support, to refugee claimants in Canada. Again, was there public consultation before Kenney made this decision?

Every major policy decision made by Jason Kenney bears the imprint of his impatience to overhaul Canada’s immigration system, which the opposition can only criticize but to no avail. Even these so-called public consultations will amount to nothing but photo ops that the people were consulted and heard before the government decided to change its policies. The obvious truth is: the government has already made up its mind.

The process of public consultations emerges from the basic belief that legitimate governments are those that listen to their citizens. After all, democratic government is tested by the capacity and opportunity for citizens to engage in enlightened debate. But how much information is deliberated in public consultations and what influence do these consultations have over the state are questions which may not be answered directly by the outcome of this process.

Access to the public consultation process by the ordinary citizens may have in fact been limited, whether by design, the targeted audience or ulterior motives. For one, these consultations are politically controlled; as such, they are ultimately used as tools by the ruling government for advertising rather than the medium from which the public gets their information on vital political matters.

Take for example the 2012 Immigration Levels Plan (from the 2011 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration) that is attached supposedly for discussion during the public consultations. This is Canada Immigration’s blueprint for determining immigration levels and mix, prepared by the department’s bureaucrats. One wonders how much can be expected from the public in terms of revisions or additional issues which Canada Immigration bureaucrats may consider in setting the final immigration levels and mix.

But the most important question to ask is how sincere is this government in canvassing public opinion in its policy decision-making?

All the press releases, all background information attached to the public consultations, and several pronouncements by Minister Kenney and his bureaucrats may in the end all sound like junk mail or a telemarketing call, which the ordinary citizen usually sets aside for good. Not that information is unimportant. Too much information is also not very useful because it simply leads the public consultation to a glitzy show of government statistics, not to a substantive debate on the government’s strategic priorities.

Writing about the lost art of political argument, Christopher Lasch wrote in Harper’s Magazine:

“Let us begin with a simple proposition: What democracy requires is public debate, not information. Of course it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate. We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy.”

When the process of public consultations becomes an extension of the town meeting, then we can say we truly have created a public forum. Not when the government calls for public consultations to advertise planned policy changes, and not actually to allow the public to debate the substance of the proposed changes. Not when public consultations are held in order to display an appearance of transparency or create the impression that the ruling government also listens.

There seems to be so much preoccupation with publicity nowadays. Publicity in terms of having good public relations or a positive public image. This is the new danger to democracy, less direct but more insidious than that of the tyranny of majority as we have now in Parliament by the ruling Conservative Party. Because it ultimately leads to the decisive influence of certain insistent and powerful minorities – those who are intent in limiting access to the public sphere since this is how they operate and thrive in a competitive political environment.

This public consultation process, the kind embarked by Canada Immigration, may very well be an effort to create public opinion that simulates the existence of a general feeling in favour of a cabinet minister, his policies or his party’s eagerness to disembowel the whole immigration system. It’s clearly ironic that the deference to this kind of manufactured public opinion may be greater than that the ordinary citizens may yield to, one which they believe to be the genuine sentiment of the majority.

Caregivers’ champion–but not for long

Before November 1 of each year, Canada’s Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is required by law to submit a report in Parliament identifying the appropriate level of immigration for the following year and the most suitable mix between economic, family class and protected persons.

The current mix stands as follows: 60 per cent come in under the economic class, 26 per cent in the family class, and 14 per cent as protected persons (refugees and others who come in for humanitarian and compassionate reasons.)

Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.Photo courtesy of No One is Illegal-Toronto.
Click the following link to view "Jason Kenney - the King of Multiculturalism,"
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CG4XNKlYdk&feature=related

A total of 18 objectives are listed in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) which serves as the guiding framework for Canada’s immigration program. In a briefing, the current department responsible for Canada’s immigration program has highlighted the following three objectives as the most important pillars of its program:

•  to support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy, in which the benefits of immigration are shared across all regions in Canada;  
•  to see that families are reunited; and
•  to fulfill Canada’s international legal obligations with respect to refugees and affirm Canada’s commitment to international efforts to provide assistance to those in need of resettlement.

Every Canadian would therefore feel proud to think that Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is doing his job well when he announced last July 12, 2011 that there would be public consultations on immigration levels and mix. Focusing on the three most important pillars of the immigration program also gives high hopes that the system which has been dysfunctional for some years would finally be overhauled for the better. That much needed reform is on the way, especially now that the Conservative government has the majority in Parliament to have its sway.

Government turnabout

But having political capital can easily make a government act arrogantly. The minute it announces public consultations about Canada’s immigration program, it instantly unmasks itself by revealing its ugly head. Instead of soliciting ideas on immigration reform, the Minister is asking us to help the government round up and deport suspected war criminals and illegal migrants. They even bought a whole newspaper page ad to display the mug shots of 30 suspected war criminals living in Canada.

To cap it all, Minister Kenney announced that the government would strip 1,800 people of their Canadian citizenship, which he said was obtained fraudulently. “There are some around the world who would seek to abuse Canada’s openness and who would seek to devalue Canadian citizenship. I’m here to tell those people that Canadian citizenship is not for sale,” Kenny put it quite bluntly.

Instead of enforcing our laws, Kenny would rather encourage vigilantism. Hunting down these alleged fraudsters, most of whom live abroad, would sidetrack Kenney’s more important objective of reforming a broken system. In addition, his emphasis on rooting out illegals and war criminals would take away public funds which his department can easily use to implement much-needed reforms such as expediting processing of applications that have been backlogged to about seven years of waiting time.

Boat full of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. Photo courtesy of controlarms.
Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvy6tMej5Gs&feature=related
to view "Jason Kenny confirmed 1,8000 new Canadians could be stripped of
of their fraudulent citizenship."

After launching his consultations in Calgary, news broke out that a ship carrying Tamils was intercepted in Indonesia and appeared to be headed for Canada. “We are not going to be a doormat for dangerous crime of people smuggling,” Kenney immediately made his quick reaction loud and clear.

What has happened to Canada’s obligation to provide assistance to those in need of resettlement? There could be genuine refugees in that boatload of Tamils, yet Kenney has already prejudged that they’re not wanted in Canada

Sidestepping issues

Kenney’s sudden fear and loathing of fraudsters, calling them “citizens of convenience,” and war criminals sends a wrong message to the world that Canada is a haven for cheaters and con artists. He’s portraying a wrong image of new Canadians, the overwhelming majority of whom respect the law, work hard, pay their taxes and contribute in making our economy strong and sound.

The message this government wants us to hear is clear and unmistakable. They are more interested in cracking down and punishing alleged illegals in this country than building the kind of immigration system founded on the three most important pillars of our immigration program as enumerated in the IRPA.

Kenney appears to be sidestepping the more important issues that have plagued Canada’s immigration system for years. Newly-settled permanent residents, for instance, want to know why it takes seven years to bring their parents in Canada. Employers also want to know when and how soon they can get the skilled labour they need.

Professional immigrants, whom Canada has enticed to come over on the basis of their high education and set of skills are wondering when their credentials will be recognized so they can get out of menial jobs they are forced to take in order to survive. Should pathways to permanent residence be considered for other temporary foreign workers? The list goes on and on, and urgency is of the essence.

During the last federal elections, Minister Kenney was regarded as a champion of immigrant rights. Caregivers in Canada have hailed him as their hero. Now that his Conservative party has won a big majority in Parliament, Kenney appears to be casting a different image—that of an enforcer who is interested more in rounding up and deporting illegals in Canada.

Caregivers Program faces possible setbacks

In a backgrounder it published regarding stakeholder consultations on immigration levels and mix just before the planned cross-country consultations, Canada Immigration has made two significant findings about the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) which could have serious implications to those thinking of applying to come to Canada under the program.

First, the backgrounder noted that many live-in caregivers leave the profession once they become permanent residents. This implies that some drastic changes may be needed if there is a sustained need for such employment, which includes the reality that if there are other choices, those who come under the program will not freely engage in “live-in” work arrangements. Either those who come in under the LCP may lose their pathway to permanent residence and be doomed to work as temporary workers for all their lives or the program be cancelled since the program appears to Canada Immigration as a floodgate for permanent residents who may not necessarily qualify if they apply under this category in the first place.

Filipino caregivers in Canada. Photo courtesy of bayan_canada. Click the
following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoNHKJb4q6g to view
"Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney Thanks Filipino Caregivers." 

Second, they have also inferred that the LCP could be a hidden form of family reunification. In analyzing some LCP applications, they found that as many as 40 per cent come to work for relatives in Canada. This raises the question whether such employment would be available for non-family members, an implication that hiring caregivers who are family relatives may be disallowed in the future. There are already reports that many qualified first-time LCP applications in Manila are being turned down in favour of those caregivers already employed overseas such as those in Hongkong, Europe or the Middle East.

If Minister Jason Kenney wants to keep his cape as the caregivers’ champion, particularly to Filipino caregivers, he needs to clarify his department’s findings and their implications to the present LCP. The new procedural rules for hiring of temporary foreign workers that Canada Immigration started implementing last April 2011 have already caused great anxiety among many caregivers in particular. These new findings that alluded some doubts on the effectiveness of the LCP would surely create even more negative repercussions.

The once-hero to Filipino caregivers may have already forgotten those who have supported him during the last federal elections. Whether this is due to political arrogance after securing a Conservative majority in Parliament, Kenney’s new preoccupation with hunting down fraudsters and illegals not only reveals his short memory but perhaps the true character of the present Conservative government.