TORONTO - Allow me to compliment you and the CFIB for your determined and consistent position on the trades –visa issue.
Mr. Kelly lays on the table some important points of discussion. First, there are 300,000 jobs in Canada that currently have no applicants. That cannot be good for the macro-economic picture and for productivity.
Second, neither Human Resources Canada nor Immigration fully appreciates the extent of the inherent bias against semi-skilled or properly trained tradespeople. Their policies do not serve the needs of employers, and by extension, the Canadian economy. In fact, there is finally an acknowledgement that many of the jobs “advertised” for TFWs are not temporary but permanent.
Third, Mr. Kelly suggests that such a template be used as a model to resolve not only the labour shortage that afflicts certain sectors of the economy – construction most notably and most severely – but also the egregious undocumented workers’ problem.
Fourth, there is a “pathway to citizenship” proposal that people can finally debate on the merits. To do that effectively some need to “put water in their [own glass of] wine.
Government appears ready to consider reality-based immigration programs. Reality means considering retention rates, social service costs and follow up family reunification cost data. The Fraser Institute studies and others which your paper has cited in the past may serve as a guide.
Each and every federal economic immigration program since 1972 has failed because they were based on “aspiration goals”, not data-based reality. A doable blue collar immigrant program can work. If we get it wrong, your members will the first to suffer the long term negative consequences.
Public policy acknowledgement of the skilled trades shortage in the GTA’s construction sector is crucial, in my view, to that success.
That sector has been the mainstay in high retention rates, low social service expenditure outlays by government, manageable family re-unification programs alleviating upward pressures for programmes directed to home buying and infrastructure.
I am glad the CFIB has assumed a leadership role in moving that agenda forward. Comment:
"“IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY:
WHEN PROCESS OBSTUCTS OBJECTIVES”
The above quote comes from the Corriere Canadese.
In light of yesterday’s budget principles tying the economy to immigration, the Corriere quote is worthy of being etched in stone as the GTA construction sector’s 1st commandment.
Other than sloth on the part of the sector’s stakeholders, there is no excuse for the immigration process being allowed to fail the GTA construction sector. "
Richard Boraks, March 23 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Today’s Federal Budget and GTA construction workers
Pages 67-70
The good news about today’s budget is that:
It recognizes foreign workers as an engine for growth. I don’t recall any previous government putting the budgetary imprimatur on temporary foreign workers and the need to find pathways to citizenship
It did not close the door on the GTA construction trades being considered within the new Global Skills strategy. In fact , the GTHA’s construction sector fits 4 square in the compliance definition
It opens the door for a renewed invigoration of the International Mobility Program which allows work permits to be issued without LMIA’s
Bottom Line: The GTA’s construction sector has been given a policy boost
We’ll see if:
The construction sector will grab these policy initiatives and get the job done
or
Will unions, employers and their ineffective, over paid government relations consultants even understand what happened today
Richard Boraks, March 22 2017
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Ahead of federal budget, hopes high for boosting high-tech job skills, expertise
Many are hoping the upcoming federal budget will help post-secondary students land real-life experience in emerging fields.
Minister of Finance Bill Morneau responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, March 6, 2017. (SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
By ANDY BLATCHFORDThe Canadian Press
Tues., March 14, 2017
OTTAWA—Expectations are running high that next week’s federal budget will provide a more detailed federal strategy — and perhaps more cash — to help post-secondary students land real-life work experience in emerging, employee-starved fields.
In last year’s budget, Ottawa committed $73 million over four years to fund an initiative aimed at ensuring that what’s being taught inside the classroom is better aligned with the tech-related needs of the job market.
Specifics have yet to be released, but the government plans to launch the program this year — and advocates will be watching the March 22 budget for signs of a framework.
“Students today want to get their hands dirty as part of the university experience,” said Universities Canada president Paul Davidson, noting there have been good discussions about work-integrated learning over the past year.
“There might be some amplification of it in the budget; there might be an extended commitment to it.”
Last year, the government set aside money for new co-op placements and work-integrated learning in anticipation of a program to encourage participation in “high-demand fields,” such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics and business.
The feds billed it at the time as part of a broader plan for a so-called “innovation agenda,” a strategy to foster the growth of young, high-potential firms in Canada and encourage talented graduates to stay in the country.
The government is counting on that strategy to help drive Canada’s long-term economic growth.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s second budget comes amid growing awareness that a wide range of today’s jobs will eventually be replaced by the rapid advance of new technologies, such as automation and artificial intelligence.
The Liberal government has spent more and more time in recent weeks talking about the need to address the evolving labour market, as well as the importance of finding ways to increase participation in the workforce.
Job skills will be “one of the key areas of focus” in the budget, Morneau said last week.
“I’m confident that we’ll help Canadians get the skills they need in a challenging economic environment,” he said.
“We’ll be thinking about not only how we can grow the economy, but how we can ensure that Canadians are prepared for the exciting and good opportunities that will come out, not only for this generation, but for the next generation as well.”
Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said he hopes Ottawa’s efforts will also acknowledge and help the more informal skills-boosting approaches relied upon by small- and medium-sized companies.
There’s rarely any government support for those firms that enlist existing staff members to show young or inexperienced workers the ropes, such as teaching them to use a piece of equipment, Kelly said.
Ottawa does, however, provide considerable support for formal skills training through the Canada Job Grant, through employment insurance measures and by way of transfer payments to the provinces for university and college funding, he added.
Canada’s smaller firms — 75 per cent of the country’s companies have fewer than five employees, Kelly noted — are often ill-equipped to take advantage of federal grants because there’s so much paperwork.
“If there are some budget measures to facilitate informal, on-the-job training, we would certainly be a cheerleader for that.”
However, there are growing calls for the government to first figure out precisely what credentials the job market is looking for.
Otherwise, Canada could find itself with too many people with skills that the market doesn’t need, said Nobina Robinson, CEO of Polytechnics Canada, a national organization representing public colleges and polytechnics.
“I certainly believe that we should have more education that leads to employment — work-integrated learning helps that, no question,” Robinson said.
Robinson said she wants to see improvements in Canada labour-market data, something the federal government’s influential advisory council on economic growth pushed for last month in its latest recommendations.
The council, led by McKinsey & Co. global managing partner Dominic Barton, has already helped guide Ottawa in shaping policies.
“Governments, academics, and others have long recognized the need for more timely and reliable labour market information,” said the Barton report, which described the data as “disorganized” and a challenge for policy-makers.
Davidson, whose organization represents 97 institutions, said only about 55 per cent of university students have some form of co-op or internship and he’d like that number to reach 100 per cent.
He’s also expecting work-integrated learning to emerge as a priority when a federal panel of youth-employment experts release their findings in the coming weeks.
“There seems to be momentum around this,” Davidson said.
Comment:
"The upcoming federal budget and GTA construction workers
White collar / Blue collar
I recall reading a few weeks ago that the upcoming federal budget will contain policy changes concerning foreign workers.
This past week, Ottawa leaked the attached story about investing in white collar training.
The comments from Dan Kelly of the independent business federation are telling. Kelly expresses frustration with Ottawa’s apparent never ending refusal to recognise the blue collar sectors.
Ottawa has clearly decided that it will never get a handle on turning out the trades workers required by Canadian industry.
This leaves the trades sectors relying on foreign workers.
Next week is Ottawa’s last opportunity to create a legal GTHA construction work force by significantly easing up on the anti-blue collar LMIA process.
My guess is that Ottawa will go through the motions of throwing a few insignificant LMIA related scraps to the GTHA construction sector. Even then, the impact of the changes will wither in the bureaucrat administration dead zone
If I’m right, the GTHA construction sector will have three options:
Option #1: Lose big money by waiting in vain for government to be rational
Option #2: Try and find more undocumented workers
Option # 3: Find workers in Europe and bring them in legally ASAP
Option #1 is never a viable consideration.
Option #2 is no longer viable because truly qualified trades workers will no longer come to Canada on an illegal basis
Option #3: This is the only viable path.
In the face of the construction sector’s anticipated determination to source and legalize its workers, government will have three options of its own:
LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY
Practically speaking government has confirmed that it is unwilling to lead.
Thus, government has only two options:
Follow or get out of the way
Let the games begin."
Richard Boraks, March 15 2017
Kellie Leitch, London politician trade Twitter fire as Tory leadership hopeful targets sanctuary city transit cash
Controversial federal Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch has fired another Twitter-based salvo that rips into the heart of sanctuary cities wanting to protect vulnerable undocumented people.
And London and its expansion of its transit dreams are right in her crosshairs.
“One law for all is a Canadian value,” Leitch tweeted. “ ‘Sanctuary cities’ will be ineligible for transit funding if I am PM.”
Coun. Jesse Helmer, a proponent of the city’s $560-million bus rapid transit plan, fired back.
“I look forward to you losing the (Conservative) leadership race,” he tweeted. “Trying to hold (London) and other (Canadian municipalities) hostage won’t work.”
“I do appreciate you being clear about your priorities.”
Leitch is a children’s surgeon and former chair of pediatric surgery at Western University. She was first elected to Parliament in 2011 in Simcoe-Grey.
Leitch has been running a leadership campaign that appears to have been ripped out of U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign playbook — heavy on nationalism with a hard-right immigration policy that proposes potential new Canadians be vetted for their “values.”
If Leitch wins the Conservative leadership and becomes prime minister, her vow on sanctuary cities would put millions of dollars in federal money in question for cities like London that need it to upgrade their transit systems.
“It’s a totally inappropriate and unproductive approach to federalism to have somebody running to be leader of a national party threatening municipalities about a decision that is up to municipalities,” Helmer said of London’s decision to become a sanctuary city.
“If we want to be a sanctuary city and provide municipal services regardless of their immigration status, that’s up to us.”
Helmer said the federal government “should not be running around making threats.”
He added that Leitch’s comment directly targets cities with major transit systems and needs for federal funding.
“I think it just shows that she’s not prepared to be prime minister of the country.”
Leitch’s comments both shocked and baffled London lawyer Susan Toth, an advocate for social justice and human rights.
She said what Leitch is proposing is a “form of blackmail” against municipalities.
“It’s unheard of, to be honest, and I’m not even sure what to think about what advice she got before she sent that tweet out,” she said.
Though Leitch’s comments were about transit funding, Toth said, they could be applied to any municipal policy that doesn’t fall in line with her views.
“The precedent would be shockingly dangerous,” she said.
Most disagreeable, Toth said, is Leitch’s politics of targeting of vulnerable people. “It’s so un-Canadian, and the fact that it’s getting any kind of traction at all is terrifying to me.”
London city council unanimously backed a call Jan. 30 to make London a sanctuary city.
City staff are studying the concept and will report back to council.
The term refers to communities that ensure everyone who lives within the boundaries is considered to be part of the community.
It opens the doors for non-status migrants — people who are in Canada without the permission of the federal government — to have access to city services such as recreation and public health.
A sanctuary city policy is often “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Bureaucrats don’t ask for proof of citizenship or other identification before providing a service.
Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver and Montreal have declared themselves sanctuary cities in Canada.
The Source:"http://www.lfpress.com/2017/03/10/kellie-leitch-says-sanctuary-cities-wont-get-transit-funding-londons-jesse-helmer-fires-back?utm_source=addThis&utm_medium=addthis_button_gmail&utm_campaign=No+sanctuary+offered+%7C+The+London+Free+Press#.WMgcTjGDKvw.gmail"
Comment:
"Kellie Leitch & Sanctuary Cities
I can understand, and even accept, the logic of those opposed to “Sanctuary Cities. As a lawyer, my stock in trade is the integrity of public policy as expressed through the law. Sanctuary cities stand as testament to the breakdown of both public policy and the law.
Sanctuary cities exist because of poor public human resource and labour policies. When employers cannot find legal workers, they find illegal workers.
Enter Kellie Leitch.
Ms. Leitch, who represents Southern Ontario, was appointed as Prime Minister Harper’s Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development. On July 15, 2013, Mr. Harper named Leitch Minister of Labour.
Ms. Leitch was at the policy table representing Southern Ontario when Mr. Harper’s government came down with some of the stupidest imaginable trades worker human resource policies for Hamilton, London & Toronto.
Trades employers in Hamilton, London and Toronto hire illegal workers because Ms. Leitch was /is more interested in being seen with important people than in pondering the role of skilled trades works required to fuel Ontario’s industrial sectors.
I’d say “shame on you Kellie”… but why bother, the woman has no shame"
Richard Boraks, March 14 2017
Chris Alexander Says Tory Leadership Bid Is About Fixing Canada, Not His Image
Posted: Updated:
Video
Conservative leadership candidate Chris Alexander laughs off the suggestion that he’s a hard guy to read.
“I’m in it to win,” the 48-year-old tells The Huffington Post Canada over breakfast at The Fairmont Macdonald in Edmonton.
It’s the morning after the would-be leaders’ debate, and Alexander is looking relaxed. His hair is wet from a morning shower. He is wearing blue jeans, a light blue cotton shirt, navy cotton blazer and light brown suede shoes. He’s sipping black coffee and has just had an orange juice.
Chris Alexander listens during a federal Conservative Party leadership debate in Vancouver, B.C., on February 19, 2017. (Photo: Darryl Dyck/CP)
He chuckles when asked why he is running — he was just roundly defeated in the Toronto-area riding of Ajax 15 months ago.
“Basically, because I love this country. I want our party to win in 2019, and I didn’t see a better candidate. It’s not because it’s my last dying wish.”
After his defeat on Oct. 19, 2015, Alexander — Canada’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, the former United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, and prime minister Stephen Harper’s last immigration minister — watched for a year to see who might emerge to lead the Tories but decided that “no one who could do a better job.”
Among the senior tier of Harper cabinet ministers, Jim Flaherty and Jim Prentice both died, while Peter MacKay, Jason Kenney and James Moore all decided not to run. The next tier of candidates — Kellie Leitch, Lisa Raitt, Maxime Bernier — are people Alexander views as “peers, not as people with deeper relevant experience.”
Chris Alexander chats with rivals in Montreal on February 13, 2017. (Photo: Paul Chiasson/CP)
“Who can bring people together — all parts of the party, social conservatives, new Conservatives, new Canadians, urban Canada? Who speaks French? Definitely not all of them. And who has a plan, and who can drive a plan,” the perfectly bilingual diplomat expands. “I talked to a lot of people and came to this decision, and I feel good about it…. I think the real race starts in the next three months.”
Alexander orders the Macdonald Benedict: two soft poached eggs on English muffins with Canadian back bacon, hollandaise sauce, heirloom potatoes, roasted roma tomatoes and sliced fresh fruit. He asks for his eggs to be poached soft.
Losing his seat gave him pause, he says. “It was a big blow…. Probably, for me in a career, the hardest hand to be dealt.”
It was difficult on his young family. He and his wife, Hedvig, have two daughters, Selma Zolaykha (born in 2009) and Elisabeth Malalai (born in 2011). He wondered if jumping into the leadership race made sense for them and whether he wanted to put everyone through that again.
Chris Alexander and his family on a trip to Mt. Tremblant (Photo: Chris Alexander)
“But failure in politics is actually part of being a better politician,” he says.
Some people have asked Alexander why they should support him when he couldn’t hold down his own riding, he says. But most people understand that the Conservatives lost for larger reasons. “It wasn’t candidates’ [fault].”
He worked harder in 2015 than he did during the 2011 race, he notes. “It wasn’t single-person combat that let us down or that showed our weakness, it was a national trend, and in urban Canada, we lost a lot of our altitude with new Canadians. We screwed up, we didn’t tell our story.
“On social media, we were second rate, and those decisions were not made by us candidates out in the highways and the byways,” he says, as the waitress brings more coffee.
Alexander, however, was one of the major faces — and more controversial figures of the 2015 campaign. Following the drowning death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, Alexander appeared on the CBC showing little empathy for the growing refugee crisis and lashing out at the public broadcaster for failing to cover the Tories’ previous refugee intake with much fanfare.
Chris Alexander on his first day as immigration minister. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
Then weeks later, he stood next to Leitch as they announced the Conservatives’ plan to establish a barbaric-cultural-practices tip line.
Alexander dismisses suggestions his leadership bid is an effort to recast himself and rebuild his public image.
“Listen, that was an unpleasant experience. That issue, that was fake news. It’s not about practices, it’s about forced marriages,” Alexander says about the Tories’ tip line.
“It’s astonishing how many articles I can point to over a whole year and a half that don’t even mention the term ‘forced marriage,’” he adds.
“These are important issues and, yes, it got labelled, framed in a certain way, by Gerald Butts, by the Liberal war-room, and we didn’t fight back.”
Chris Alexander met his wife Hedvig in Afghanistan. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
Butts is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary and the main architect of the Liberals’ electoral win. He is, however, not responsible for the framing of the tip line.
It was Alexander and Leitch, after all, who stood behind a lectern with the words “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices.” He watched as Leitch announced that a re-elected Conservative government would establish an RCMP tip line so that citizens and victims could “call with information about incidents of barbaric cultural practices here in Canada or to notify authorities that a child or a woman is at risk of being victimized.”
As he takes a sip of coffee, Alexander defends the Tories’ framing. “Forced marriage is tantamount to modern day slavery; it is barbaric in my view.”
So, where is the fake news?
“For a year and a half people have talked about this issue — Chris Alexander, barbaric practices this, barbaric practices that. They never mention, what the underlying issue is, which is women and girls in forced marriages,” he responds.
“I’m not in this race to overcome some interview…. That is in the deep past now. I’m in it because Canada needs a better government. I wake up every morning scratching my head, wondering how someone as unqualified as Justin Trudeau became prime minister of Canada. I think it reflects really badly on all of us.”
"Failure in politics is actually part of being a better politician."
The waitress arrives with the eggs benedict and Alexander takes a bite.
What Alexander wants to talk about is his desire to build a Canada that is more engaged in international affairs. He envisages a country that spends more on its military, air force and navy, that contributes more to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and isn’t afraid of engaging in Syria.
Chris Alexander in Moscow in 1994. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
He believes Canada should be bombing the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria and ensuring that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s air force can’t bomb his own people by grounding his air operation, and using Canadian special forces on the ground to help identify targets.
“These are the issues of our time, state sponsorship of terrorism really matters to me. The conflict to Syria really matters to me, half a million people dead.”
As he told the crowd in Edmonton: “I was in Afghanistan for six years. Terrorism in Syria and Iraq is much worse [and] threatens the future of at least a dozen countries.”
Alexander also wants to aggressively court world markets in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. He wants Canada to diversify its exports to ensure 50 per cent of trade is done outside the continent. He wants the Canadian Forces used to ensure the safety of marine trade routes and he wants to extend Canada’s diplomatic presence round the globe, using it to promote deeper trade.
Chris Alexander addresses a Conservative Party leadership debate on February 13, 2017 in Montreal. (Photo: Paul Chiasson/CP)
Canada needs to tell the world that it is the best place to do business, he says. He promises to slash payroll taxes on small businesses, reduce corporate income taxes (although he doesn’t say by how much) and invest heavily in mostly undefined large-scale innovation incentives. He wants to make it attractive for start-ups to stay in Canada and for companies, especially European firms, to set up a North American home-base in Canada.
He wants to bring “deep tech” to Canada, from artificial intelligence and robotics to genetic engineering. He wants the new economy to happen here.
“It’s different than the Trudeau thing,” he adds unprompted, no doubt anticipating the next question. The prime minister has promised to bring forward an innovation agenda that sounds very similar to what Alexander is pitching. “They [the Liberals] talk about it,” he says, “but then they make government bigger.”
It’s hard to see how Alexander wouldn’t make government bigger. He promises tax cuts and a lot more spending on embassies abroad, on active military missions and to expand the size of the army. While he pledges to repeal any carbon tax and build pipelines in every direction, he also says he wants “a larger CBC” mandated to provide more foreign coverage that fits with the government’s economic and political agenda. He wants to create an independent firearms agency to regulate guns and an independent procurement agency to purchase National Defence equipment, including “the best fighter jets” and nuclear submarines.
‘I’m a 2011 Conservative Party of Canada conservative’
Alexander wants to nation-build, like the prime ministers he most admires: John Diefenbaker, Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Robert Borden, Brian Mulroney.
Unlike most other Tory candidates, he has policy focused on ending homelessness (he would introduce a private sponsorship plan, for example) and on addressing problems on First Nations' reserves.
If he were prime minister, he says, clean water and good education would be a daily focus for his government.
“To win, we need a bigger party than we have today,” he explains. While he was a Progressive Conservative youth — he even remembers Leitch from her early activism days — he is now a “Conservative Party of Canada conservative.”
“But, I’m a 2011 Conservative Party of Canada conservative in that, in 2011 we won [many] of the seats in the city of Toronto. We won in all parts of Canada except for Quebec, where we went down. And that’s the way we need to be to win.”
Chris Alexander at the Canadian embassy in Moscow in 2002. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
Unprompted, Alexander takes a swipe at two of the contest’s perceived front-runners.
Bernier “is not going to win.” His pledge to end all government subsidies is “obscene,” Alexander says, adding that Bernier would have a hard time pivoting from a libertarian platform to a forge a broader coalition.
“You have to be honest with people at this stage about how you are going to go win the election,” he says. “Do you think that the Conservative Party of Canada can go into an election against Justin Trudeau promising $60-billion of cuts to government spending? … We won’t win.”
Similarly, Alexander thinks Leitch won’t appeal to millennials and new immigrant voters because of her call to screen all newcomers for so-called “Canadian values.”
“If we go that way, we will end up with a narrowing coalition with a narrower party than we had in 2015, and that was already lower than we had in 2011.”
X
“I could not campaign on a platform of draconian cuts to government spending… and I could certainly not campaign on a platform that included mandatory interviews on Canadian values for visitors. I mean that idea is so insipid that I find myself — it sickens me that it is even an issue in this.”
Alexander originally committed to run again in 2019 but he’s no longer sure.
“It depends…. We’ll have to see who the leader is and so forth,” he says, adding some hot sauce to what’s left of his eggs.
Alexander’s policy proposals haven’t attracted much attention. Perhaps, it’s because he has raised only $116,396 in 2016 from 230 individuals, placing him ninth of 14 candidates. Perhaps, it is because he has no endorsements from any of his old colleagues in the House of Commons.
‘Lock her up’ controversy
Perhaps, it is because Alexander continues to attract a lot of negative attention. He was criticized in December for standing by while protesters in Edmonton shouted “lock her up” as he spoke about Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s climate policies. “Lock her up” was the chant used by supporters of then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump against his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton.
Alexander can be seen in a video, posted by The Rebel, a right-wing website, smiling, nodding and waving his finger with the chanting crowd. He told the media after the incident that he tried to change the chant to “vote her out.”
"I was somewhat shocked, taken aback, mortified even, that this chant, this slogan, from south of the border was suddenly being picked up by everyone in front of me," Alexander told the CBC after the incident.
"I as well find it offensive that people would be calling for illegal — even if some of them thought it was in jest — for illegal actions, threatening actions, against a sitting premier of Alberta."
He was playing for time, trying to find a way to interject, he said in explaining his body language. As the chant wound down, he talked about voters using the ballot box to send a message to the premier.
A week later, Alexander was in Calgary telling a group of Albertans that he had been warned by “a bunch of politically correct people” not to return to another rally in the province. There he led a “vote her out” chant.
In February, with the backdrop of anti-Islamophobia motion M-103 being debated in Parliament, Alexander, along with four other leadership candidates, attended The Rebel’s “Freedom Rally” at Canada Christian College in Toronto.
Organizers said the motion was an attempt to expand anti-blasphemy laws in Canada. Alexander took the stage to talk about freedom of speech.
“I have a lot of trouble with a motion that talks about hatred this, phobia that, and doesn’t mention the No. 1 threat in the world today, which is Islamic jihadist terrorism,” he said to cheers. While the leadership candidate noted that there are Muslims who are worried when they go to the mosque, and Alexander said Canada would stand with them to support their freedom of religion and their freedom to be safe from violence, someone in the crowd yelled: “Ban Islam!”
“Can’t be with you on that journey, but I support your freedom of speech,” Alexander responded.
Chris Alexander and his wife were married in Denmark. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
The Rebel rally took place only 17 days after a gunman killed six men praying in a Quebec City mosque.
Alexander says he attended the protest in Edmonton because it was a rally for jobs in Alberta.
“In Toronto, it was a rally about freedom of speech where I wanted to say, and did say, freedom of speech includes recognizing anti-Muslim hatred in this country is a reality. Islamophobia is a problem. We as Canadians stand together to oppose those things.
“At the same time,” he said, “this misunderstanding doesn’t come from hot head Canadians… it comes from the fact that essentially the Islamic State has been on a rampage since 2012.”
“But what happened in 2012 in 2013? The Islamic State started to up its media machine, beheading people, conducting atrocities in full public view, and so some people, a worrying number of people can’t distinguish between a Muslim and the fanatic, the terrorists that are conducting these acts, and it makes them nervous.
Chris Alexander, shown here hiking the Grouse Grind years ago, enjoys being outdoors. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
“Every poll shows that there is anxiety about these issues so we have to talk about terrorism, and the real threats that are out there that we should be doing more to stop.”
The waitress comes by to clear the plates. Alexander hasn’t eaten his breakfast potatoes. He orders a cappuccino.
“It was one heckler. I think he was misguided. I thought it was absurd what he was saying. He didn’t get support from anyone else, so I moved on...
“Listen, I don’t agree with a lot of what these guys do, just like I don’t agree with what is on a lot of CBC but if I am invited to speak to, in Toronto, my hometown, to a meeting where basically everyone is a Conservative, oh yeah I would go,” he says, whispering now.
“Oh yeah, the coverage is all about the guys in the Trump hats, but there were 50 Iranian Canadians there, some of them gay, who were brought to this country by us. They are my friends, and they are there saying, let’s not go too far on Islamophobia. None of us want hate speech against Islam or any religion, but there is an agenda championed by Saudi Arabia and other countries that wants to shut down all criticism of Islam in Western countries.”
There is fear mongering on all side, he says. During the last election, he spoke at a mosque in Pickering, Ont., where, he says, the imam gave a “blood curdling speech denouncing the West… basically calling for violence, not in Canada but against westerners of the world, and his speech could have been written in Tehran.”
The man in question is Maulana Syed Mohammad Zaki Baqri, an anti-Semitic extremist imam who, according to media reports, seemed to rub Alexander the wrong way after he bashed Harper.
Alexander says he didn’t report the imam or his speech. “I’m a politician, I’m not in law enforcement. I don’t interfere… I was in an election campaign; it’s not what you do.”
Instead, Alexander says, he told the crowd he disagreed with the imam’s message but supported his freedom of speech because if he had made a speech like that in Tehran denouncing the supreme leader he would be in jail.
‘There is a lot of anger’
The forums he chooses to attend may be controversial but Alexander says he wants to be where the people are.
“I’m not a populist. I’m not someone who panders to it… I’m a modernizer.”
To win, he says, Conservatives need to be together. “We have to be social conservatives, we have to rally for Alberta conservatives...
“There is a lot of anger in the political world today, if you are not able to deal with it, to understand where it is coming from and help people get answers and get solutions, you’re not doing your job as a politician today.”
* * *
Alexander always wanted to be a politician. In high school, he dreamed of one day becoming prime minister. “Who didn’t?” he asks, with a smile.
He was a bright student who benefited from an upper-middle class upbringing and the attention of smart giving parents who provided him with opportunities that helped him excel.
Alexander was born at Toronto General Hospital in 1968. His mother, Andrea, was a high school teacher turned arts-and-culture volunteer. His father, Bruce, worked as a lawyer and later served as an assistant deputy minister for the Ontario government.
He attended Oriole Public School, where he took Grades 2 and 3 together. At the quasi-private University of Toronto School, he did Grade 7 and 8 combined with the other students. When he entered McGill University, he was 16.
In high school, he took German and won a provincial language contest. He was actively involved in model United Nations simulations, which piqued his interest in global affairs, and served as president of the student council in Grade 13.
Chris Alexander took Grades 2 and 3 together. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
At McGill, where he earned a bachelor's degree in history and political science — “joint honours,” he notes — he submitted his papers and took exams in French. He served as the student council’s vice-president of external affairs and rowed. His accomplishments didn’t earn him the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, which recognizes the top students and athletes with a grant to study at the University of Oxford.
Governor General David Johnson, then the president of McGill, forced him to apply, he says. But not getting it was a blessing. He’d rather “not wear the stigma of Cecil Rhodes.” (Rhodes believed whites were the “master race” and the more of the world whites inhabited, the better it would be for humanity).
After graduating in December 1988, Alexander moved to Quebec City to live with his cousin and attend a semester of university at Laval. He wanted to speak French. He was the only federalist in his class.
The following fall, he was at Oxford anyway studying philosophy and economics, having received the Philip F. Vineberg Travelling Fellowship in the Humanities. The scholarship is awarded to, according to its description, the student who best exemplifies “the qualities of intelligence.”
Chris Alexander entered McGill University at age 16. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
He had written the foreign service exam before leaving McGill, and mid-way through his second BA at Oxford, the department called to offer him a job. He joined Foreign Affairs in 1991.
Two weeks into his job as a desk officer, there was an attempted coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. He had expressed an interest in the Soviet Union, having travelled to the region, visited East Germany on an exchange, and Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution. In 1993, he was sent to Moscow as the third secretary and vice-council. Within a month of his arrival, Alexander was standing outside the Russian White House during then-president Boris Yeltsin's standoff with the Russian parliament. He remembers people falling all around him and running as snipers shot into the crowd.
In 1995, he recalls meeting Vladimir Putin, then the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. The two would go on to cross paths several times, with Alexander serving as Putin’s liaison officer during his G8 visit to Kananaskis. Putin, Alexander says, wanted to know where the “Indians” were.
After a stint back in Ottawa as the assistant to the deputy minister on G8 issues, and as the deputy director of the Russian section, Alexander was sent back to Moscow in 2000 as the No. 2 person in the mission.
Chris Alexander and former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien walk the Red Square. He is said to have been courted by the Liberals, as well. (Photo: Chris Alexander/CP)
Three years later, Ottawa offered him Canada’s top job in Afghanistan. “I hesitated for about three seconds.” He was an ambassador at 34.
Two and half years later, Alexander, who had earned rave reviews as an extremely bright, capable, and active diplomat from army commanders and civilians alike, left the federal public service on a leave of absence.
He had no desire to leave Afghanistan after 2½ years, he says. “I felt the job we were all trying to do in Afghanistan was just starting.”
He is particularly proud of Canada’s involvement in organizing the 2004 presidential elections, and watching the long lines of women and men form early in the morning.
Months after his arrival in Afghanistan, Alexander had also just met Hedvig, a Danish army captain working with the International Security Assistance Force. Their courtship was normal for the circumstances: their first date was at a Kabul restaurant with three fully armed Canadian soldiers standing guard as a protective detail.
Chris Alexander is shown holding a newborn daughter. (Photo: Chris Alexander)
She later worked for the UN on elections and disarmament and ran two charitable projects in Afghanistan. In 2008, they married in Denmark.
Alexander had been offered the senior civilian job in Afghanistan for NATO and a UN job as special permanent representative. He chose the UN gig and served from 2005 to until mid-2009, after the birth of his first daughter.
Afghanistan was tough, especially after the international community “started losing.” During his time as Canadian ambassador, things were relatively secure, but then the Taliban rebounded.
“When you see villages, districts falling, civilians being killed; yeah, a whole nation losing hope, those are the biggest psychological blows I’ve ever felt.”
He wrote it, he says, because the larger story was not being told. “So much of what was achieved in Afghanistan was obscured by the disaster of the Iraq mission,” he says. “Moreover, stability could not come to Afghanistan without an end to Pakistani support for the Taliban, the Haqqanis and other groups. I wanted to draw attention to this issue, and still do.”
He is still frustrated the international community turned a blind eye at Pakistan’s involvement.
When he would talk about support for the Taliban by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, the Americans would tell him to keep quiet, that it wasn’t true. It’s one of his big regrets. He wishes he’d been more direct about an ally training and funding groups that were killing foreign soldiers.
“If you have good political leadership, even at the margins, it really moves things ahead. It can really make life better. And when you don’t things can go backwards.”
"I don’t have people beating their breasts and ripping their clothes off for me with passionate shows of support. But I find a lot of people say:'You're talking sense.'"
After Alexander left his post in 2009, he headed to Denmark for a few months before coming back to Canada. He already knew he was going into Canadian politics.
“Going back into the foreign service and being in a nice comfortable place but not being in the crucible of decision-making or in the political arena, it would have been boring,” he says.
He had spoken to people in the Prime Minister’s Office, including Harper’s campaign manager, Doug Finley, who told him to find a Toronto-area riding the Tories could win that didn’t already have a candidate.
For a few months, he lived in a condo downtown before he and his wife settled in Ajax. By late September, he was the Conservative candidate in that riding.
Alexander says he had thought of running for office earlier but the timing wasn’t right. He wanted to join the foreign service to gain relevant experience. “And for many of those years, you couldn’t run as a Conservative, right? Because we weren’t united. We weren’t a force…. Certainly, in ridings around Toronto, there was no chance.”
Chris Alexander participates in a bilingual debate in Moncton, N.B. on Dec. 6, 2016. (Photo: Andrew Vaughan/CP)
In 2006, he says he “saw the potential” and “in 2008, I was ready to get on board.”
Media reports at the time suggested Alexander had been courted by the Liberals as well, but he says those talks were never serious.
After pounding the pavement in the riding for two years, Alexander defeated the Liberal incumbent Mark Holland. (Holland returned the favour when he bested Alexander in 2015).
He found his tenure in government rewarding. He says: “I felt very appreciated in government as a voice on some issues.”
He was appointed immigration minister two years later. Under his leadership of the department, the government introduced Bill C-24, which stripped dual-citizens convicted of terrorist offences of their Canadian citizenship. Another Conservative policy that backfired during the 2015 campaign.
X
This time though, Alexander hopes to build a less exclusionary tent.
“I want a broader party that includes people like you and me, that includes a lot of Canadians,” he says.
“This is a preferential ballot where people are still deciding not only who their first choice is but who their top three or four choices are, and it is not going to be easy for anyone to achieve the numbers,” he says.
The Conservative leadership race will also be decided by a point-system that gives every riding equal weight in determining who the next leader is, regardless of size of the membership.
Alexander insists he has a chance of winning. “I really do. I wouldn’t be here otherwise…
“I don’t have people beating their breasts and ripping their clothes off for me with passionate shows of support. But I find a lot of people say: 'You're talking sense. We need these kinds of messages. An economic message that is well-rounded.'"
The Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/03/09/chris-alexander-conservative-leadership-race_n_15269282.html
Comment:
"Chris Alexander … a deserving political obituary
I’d be lying if I said that I have nothing personal against Chris Alexander.
Normally, I can avoid referencing political “faux pas” as indicative of a man’s character, or lack thereof. I can usually understand and forgive a political figure who has prejudiced my clients. After all, “business is business”, “we all make mistakes”, “he tried his best”, “maybe he was right” etc., etc.
Given his personal life story, I was hoping that Alexander would rise above his term as a failed politician and an exceptionally terrible Minister. I could have forgiven his financial conflicts, his bigotry, his cowardice, his lies .He could have opened a new chapter in his life. All would be forgiven. His worth as a man would have increased.
Instead, Alexander has learned nothing. The ongoing parameters of his world view are the boundless limits of his extreme narcissism. He has nothing to offer but the perfection of his mirror’s reflection.
The world according to Alexander continues as follows:
The voters did not reject his immigration policies. They merely did not understand the policies
Immigration was the key reason for the party’s defeat in the GTA. But the problem was not his policies. The problem was the party’s explanation of those policies
The voters did not reject his values but simply did not understand his values
The voters did not reject his personal messaging of his policies but , instead the media framed the message in a “fake news “ manner
Alexander denies that he is perusing a political carer in order to salvage his reputation. Sadly, he is right … there is no reputation left to salvage."
