FROLITICKS

Satirical commentary on Canadian and American current political issues

Aug 29

Just Who Are These American People Supporting Trump Administration’s Policies?

by bcurry

I keep reading and hearing about the American public whom the Trump administration appears to listen to and who in turn supposedly lend their support.  Some have speculated that they are those who claim to be part of the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.  However, the MAGA supporters still only represent a fraction of the Republican Party.  Based on recent polls in the U.S., which put Trump’s approval ratings at an all time low, it certainly doesn’t appear to include the vast majority of independent voters.  As for the “big, beautiful bill” recently passed by the Republicans, at the town halls held by Republican Congressional representatives the negative and furious reactions by their constituents don’t appear to be very favourable.  The majority of Americans are now also beginning to question the administration’s tariffs and immigration policies.  It would appear the emphasis on dealing with inflation, remembering Trump’s references to the high cost of “groceries”, has now taken a back seat to his other priorities.  This at a time when the real impact of high tariffs on imports from India and China have yet to be fully felt by American consumers.  Many Americans, particularly those in states bordering with Canada, are not happy with how the Trump administration is dealing with its northern neighbour and long time friend, ally and trading partner.

Prior and during the last election, there is little doubt that some Americans were concerned about numerous federal agencies, especially with respect to their credibility and trust wariness.  Instead of restoring their trust in agencies such as the Federal Reserve Board, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Justice Department to name a few, we now see the administration attempting to dismantle and weaponize these independent bodies.  Trump is replacing their heads with politically loyal hacks with little or no expertise in leading or running such institutions.  By doing this, the administration argues that the ability of the President to exercise his hiring and firing policies ensures political accountability for them to the American people.  Again, who just are these American people?  While there are always ways to improve their operations, attacking independent bodies in this manner tends to undermine their important mandates which are intended to be apolitical and based on expertise and research-based objectivity.  No other administration in U.S. history has ever assailed these institutions in the way that the Trump administration is proceeding to try to bring them into line with his political thinking.  Furthermore, there is no clear evidence of any form of so-called “deep state” existing among independent bodies.

Of course, within the federal government, there are senior positions that each new administration will fill with its own politically motivated appointments, normally leaving the remainder of each department’s operations under the capable hands of career civil servants.  One can only hope that confirmed appointees are credible and experienced administrators in what ever mandate they will represent.  Unlike in Canada, the appointment of hundreds of senior administrators is left up to the President, resulting in a major turnover at the top with each new administration.  Generally, in Canada the bulk of senior federal officials are career bureaucrats with the applicable administrative capabilities, frequently serving under governments of varying political stripes.  For this reason, the Canadian public service is somewhat admired among democratic countries and often put forward as a good administrative example for governments.

There is little doubt that Trump was attempting to appease his base, in particular MAGA, by instituting his policies via many executive actions in his first hundred days in office.  Meanwhile, the Republican dominated Congress sat on the sidelines watching it all happening and has failed to address some of the more controversial executive orders, some of which most likely are unconstitutional.  So just who are these members serving at this time?  It certainly doesn’t appear to be their own constituents based on the resulting outrage being witnessed throughout the country, even in red states!

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Aug 12

Trump’s Use of Military for Domestic Policing Represents a New and Dangerous Trend

by bcurry

Let me take you back to the province of Quebec in the fall of 1970, and what became known as the October Crisis in Canada. The crisis was the culmination of a long series of terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a militant Quebec independence movement, between 1963 and 1970.  On 5 October 1970, the FLQ kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross in Montreal.  Within the next two weeks, FLQ members also kidnapped and killed Quebec Minister of Immigration and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte. Quebec’s premier Robert Bourassa and Montreal’s mayor Jean Drapeau called for federal help to deal with the perceived crisis.  In response, then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, by invoking the War Measures Act, deployed the Armed Forces across Quebec and in Ottawa — the only time it had been applied during peacetime in Canadian history.  Seen as inappropriate and overkill at the time by legislators, the federal government subsequently substituted it with the Emergencies Act in 1988 as the modern-day replacement to the previous War Measures Act which had not been designed to deal with domestic security issues.  At the time of the October Crisis and the related deployment of Canadian troops, the American media quickly decried the move as something that could never happen in the U.S. under its constitution!

Well, all that has now changed with the Trump administration’s recent deployment of 4,700 National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles, without the California governor’s request,  to help quell protests that had erupted over immigration raids and to protect the federal agents conducting them.  Just this week, that move has been followed up by the contentious announcement that at least 800 National Guard troops are to be deployed into the streets of Washington, D.C., to supposedly fight a growing crime wave.  What is concerning is that officials have stated that the soldiers in Washington will probably be able to detain people temporarily in certain circumstances until federal agents arrive.  It is also reported that Military leaders are trying to keep the rules of engagement for the D.C. mission as narrow as possible. One Defense Department official reportedly stated that soldiers carrying M-16s, who have been trained to kill adversaries, are not to be put in policing roles.  However, if threatened they can use force in response, whatever that means.  In the case of L.A., some National Guard soldiers were accused of having used overly aggressive tactics against protesters. Trump has also hinted that similar deployments could be done in other urban centres, mentioning Chicago and New York City.

Local citizen protests have already begun in Washington, and are expected no doubt to continue.  The city’s mayor expressed similar disbelief, noting that the last two year’s statistics have shown an actual decline in violent crime ranging from 20 to 25 percent.  The outrage is understandable, since the Canadian 1970 experience led to hundreds of unwarranted arrests of innocent people by the authorities, who in several cases where simply political opponents of the Quebec government at the time.  This created a subsequent backlash among political parties and Canadians, resulting in the legislative changes as noted above. 

In interviews with The New York Times, members of the California National Guard said the deployment to Los Angeles had eroded the morale of the force.  Guard officials also expressed concerns that the L.A. deployment would hurt re-enlistment.  For the military as a whole, the cost could come in recruiting and retention, something critics are warning could also happen in Washington.

In a democracy, deploying troops domestically during peacetime without justification and on a whim can be very damaging from an institutional and political standpoint.  In this case, the president is overstepping his power and needs to be challenged by Congress and in the courts.  Let’s face it, there is no immediate threat to national security and this militarized process undermines the credibility and integrity of local and state police forces.  While the domestic deployment of armed forces to assist communities facing local natural disasters such as wildfires, earthquakes and floods can be justified, their deployment under the above circumstances is unwarranted and represents a dangerous precedent.  

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May 22

The Hypocrisy of Trump’s Foreign Policy Stance

by bcurry

This week, President Trump sat in a press conference and berated President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, a democratic state, with false claims about a genocide being committed against white Afrikaner farmers.  On the other hand, just a week ago President Trump had traveled to three Middle East countries ruled by repressive and non-democratic regimes and told them he would not lecture them about how they treat their own people.  The above meeting was subsequent to the administration’s fast tracking of the refugee status of dozens of white Afrikaans to the U.S. from South Africa, claiming that they were being persecuted by the government of that country and their lives and livelihood had been threatened.  No proof of the accusations was provided.

In contrast, one of Trump’s first actions on taking office in January 2025 was to issue an executive order suspending the Afghan resettlement program and leaving those eligible in legal limbo.  Approximately 180,000 Afghans had been admitted to the United States after August 2021.  Some were given special immigration visas (SIVs) that provided a path to permanent residency, while others were given humanitarian parole and granted temporary protected status (TPS) that allowed them to stay and to work in the U.S.  On April 11th, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced its decision to end TPS for more than 9,000 Afghans because Afghanistan “no longer continues to meet the statutory requirement for TPS.” Those targeted were given the option to self-deport before May 20, 2025.  Some of these Afghans had served with the American forces as interpreters and in other capacities, and any return to Afghanistan would most likely prove to be fatal to them and their families.

The encounter with President Ramaphosa in some ways echoed the previous February visit to the Oval Office by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.  Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelensky in front of TV cameras, cutting short a visit meant to coordinate a plan for peace.  At one point, Trump even suggested that the Ukraine was responsible for starting the war with Russia which is completely false.  Since then, Trump has subsequently met with Zelensky and had a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin in seeking to begin discussions for a permanent cease fire and resolution of the dispute.  However, most experts believe that Putin is simply stringing Trump along and has no intention of committing to fair and equitable negotiations with Zelensky.  Having failed to get both parties to the table, Trump now appears to have decided to concentrate only on economic talks with Ukraine, including those over that country’s rare minerals, and to forgo his intermediary status in the talks.

On May 6th, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Trump met at the White House and held a brief news event that focused on tariffs, trade and Trump’s repeated assertion that Canada should be the 51st state — a notion that Carney again clearly rejected.  While this meeting was somewhat more cordial in tone, the primary discussion of the existing Canada-U.S.-Mexico (CUSMA) didn’t really get addressed.  Instead, Trump simply restated that there wasn’t anything Carney could say to convince him to lift the existing tariffs.  However, Carney has called the CUSMA as “the basis for a broader negotiation.”  Remember, that it was under the previous Trump administration that the current trade agreement was signed, which has now been violated with Trump’s recent tariffs on both Canadian and Mexican imports to the U.S.

What we have to date is a weird collage of approaches to foreign policies under the Trump administration.  Where Trump believes there are positive economic returns to the U.S., such as in the Middle East, he is quite willing to enter into bilateral trade arrangements, despite having to deal with non-democratic and repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.  His administration has even alluded to possibly reducing or eliminating existing economic sanctions on Russia imposed after Putin’s past invasion of Crimea and the current armed invasion of Eastern Ukraine.  All of this contributes to the evident hypocrisy of Trump’s foreign policy stance.

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Mar 17

Donald Trump’s Administration Is Clearly Showing Signs Of Becoming Despotic

by bcurry

The Oxford English Dictionary states that a despot is “a ruler who exercises absolute power especially in a cruel and oppressive way.”  Anyone who has studied American governance under the constitution understands that it provides for “checks and balances.”  In order to do this, there are three basic pillars: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.  However, today we are seeing an evident weakening of two of these principle pillars under the Trump administration.  There is little doubt that attacks are being made against the justice system and the rule of law.  The President has entered into a new process never before witnessed in the U.S., other than during times of wars.  The President is abusing his powers while contesting the roles of the courts and of Congress.  He is undermining the very constitutional rights of many people, whether citizens, legally living or refugees in the U.S.

The latest example is that of Mahmoud Khalil, a young U. of Columbia graduate student who is married to an American citizen, living in New York, and recently obtained a green card giving him permanent residency in the U.S. Mr. Khalil has never been charged with a criminal offence.  On March 8th, Mr. Khalil was arrested by ICE officers and flown to LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana.  On March 10th, District Judge Jesse Furman ordered that the Trump administration not deport Khalil pending judicial review of his arrest.  Mr. Khalil was a student activist and negotiator in the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupations.  After student protests on numerous American campuses, President Trump issued an executive order promising to combat anti-semitism and prosecute or “remove” perpetrators of such views.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited a little-used 1952 Cold-War era statute as the rationale for Mr. Khalil’s detention. The law says that the government can initiate deportation proceedings against anyone whose presence in the country is deemed adversarial to the U.S. foreign policy interests.  Rubio subsequently posted a threat to deport Hamas supporters. No one has yet provided any proof that Mr. Khalil has a direct or indirect connection Hamas.  If anything, he was actively exercising his constitutional right to freedom of speech in a peaceful manner.  Needless-to-say, there were those, including Trump who would deny this right because they simply did not agree with his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including some Columbia administrators.  For this reason, he was targeted from the outset.

Just this past weak, Trump signed an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly arrest and deport those the administration identifies as gang members without many of the legal processes common in immigration cases. The enemies law allows for summary deportations of people from countries at war with the United States.  One result is the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, some of whom are claimed by the administration to be gang members.  Subsequently, Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting any immigrants under the law after Trump’s order invoking it.  In a hastily scheduled hearing sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the judge said he did not believe that federal law allowed the President’s action.  Now there is serious contention over whether the Trump administration had ignored an explicit court order, given that the deportees are currently in the El Salvador prison.

Moreover, there appears to be an apparent use of unproven assertions pertaining to ensuring matters related to “national security”, without undergoing the normal “due process” in providing proof or clear evidence before the courts.  In addition, it is obvious that Trump is blatantly “weaponizing” the Department of Justice to do his bidding, something that he falsely claimed had be done to him in the past.  In my opinion, Trump’s actions are increasingly becoming those of a despot.  Whether you agree with me or not, these are certainly dangerous times for American governance!

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Dec 7

New Political and Social-Economic Realm of Diversity in America

by bcurry

Back in March of this year, the Biden administration ordered changes to a range of federal surveys to gather more detailed information about the nation’s ethnic and racial makeup.  Why is this important?  For example, most people of Middle Eastern and North African descent reportedly are currently classified as “white” in U.S. census data.  According to the Census Bureau estimates, this represented about 3.5 million people falling into that category.  They represent for example people whose descent is Lebanese, Egyptian, Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli.  Under the new format, people of Middle Eastern and North African descent will have their own category.  Officials of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversaw the review of the current survey questions, said the changes were needed in part to make surveys more accurate.

The reason more accurate surveys are increasingly important is that America is increasing becoming more diverse.  The non-white population has nearly doubled since 1990 to over 40% in 2023, as the proportion of non-Hispanic whites decreased from 75% to 58%.  According to the USAFacts Team, the nation’s non-white population has almost doubled over the past four decades, growing from about 24% of the population in 1990 to over 40% in 2023.  Furthermore, according to the US Census Bureau, the multiracial population is projected to be the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group over the next four decades, followed by the Asian or Pacific Islander and Hispanic populations.  The non-Hispanic white population is expected to continue shrinking.

The above announced changes most likely have the potential to rankle conservatives who believe that the nation’s focus on diversity has already gone too far.  Interestingly, both the Republicans and Democrats during the recent election attempted vigorously to cater to Blacks, Latinos and Hispanics to have their votes which were deemed critical in several states.  This time around, the Trump campaign notably targeted those communities with diverse populations.  In many cases, the non-White populace was just as concerned about the economy and immigration as many of his White supporters.  Something that the Democratic Party failed to fully realize during its campaign — a startling factor given Pamela Harris being a Black candidate.

Now one has to ask is whether Donald Trump will allocate more positions in his cabinet to better reflect the nation’s diversity?  So far, the answer appears to be a resounding “no”.  Specifically selecting people from such bodies as Fox News certainly doesn’t help.  He may have to go outside his comfort zone!  In addition, federal policies will have to better reflect the importance of diverse populations.  Those who broadly support the new survey questions — academics, civil liberties advocates and racial and ethnic interest groups among them — say they would help promote greater fairness in schools, housing, hiring and other aspects of society where census data is used.  I’m not so sure that Trump’s immediate advisory body, made up mainly of rich White men, is going to facilitate appropriately dealing with such issues.

Favouring one group over another will lead to even more division within the country.  Hopefully, the Republicans in Congress will appreciate this matter in their deliberations.  Many marginalized groups are made up of persons from diverse communities, and are affected particularly hard by any reduction in socio-economic benefit programs.  Such policies would no doubt lead to increased hardships for these people.  Cutting such programs in the name of “efficiency” should not be an option in these dire times, accentuated by growing poverty, homelessness and inadequate medical care.  One has to question what Trump means when he proposes to make America great again?  Just who will actually benefit?

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Jul 21

Concerns Over Refugee Flows Into the U.S. Are Decades in the Making

by bcurry

The current issues surrounding the influx of refugees over the Mexican-U.S. border have been decades in the making.  It doesn’t matter whether it was a Democratic or Republican administration, American policies and initiatives have created the past and current issues surrounding refugees and so-called illegals, particularly from Central American countries.  Anyone who would like to examine an excellent historical accounting of these policies should read a 2024 book by Jonathan Blitzer entitled: “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here (The United States, Central America, and The Making of a Crisis)”.  Mr. Blitzer is a well known staff writer at The New Yorker.  He describes not only past U.S. policies supporting autocrats and military regimes in countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala, but he also relates stories which put a face on several migrants.

He noted as follows: “From the 1980s to the early 2000s, the story of the southern border was about the United States and Mexico.  At the time, migrants entering the US tended to be single Mexican men looking for work.  But around 2014, a different population started to arrive on a scale Americans had never before seen.  These were children and families from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — traveling north to seek asylum.  In just about every respect, the US was unprepared for this shift.”

Notably, each of the last three American presidents have had to deal with a major humanitarian emergency at the border, while also deepening involvement in two major civil wars in Central America, often in the name of fighting communism as alluded to by President Ronald Reagan back in the early 1980s.  While rebels in these countries were fighting for people against authoritarian regimes, social injustice and military atrocities, the U.S. was backing those same regimes through military aid and covert operations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Government led violence and massacres became common place, forcing many families and individuals to flee these countries.

Today, one can add Venezuela to the list as the most recent migrants are from that single country.  Many Venezuelans had expected to join large existing communities of their compatriots in places such as Florida and Texas.  How did the governors of some states react to this latest influx?  They simply began a program of busing or flying recent migrants to cities such as New York, Washington, Chicago and Philadelphia.  Interestingly, the destinations were cities run by Democrats who supported the Biden administration’s more open immigration policy. Soon, some neighbourhoods in those cities started looking like Texas border towns.

As reported recently by The New York Times, in two years Texas alone bused more than 119,000 people to Democrat-led cities, shifting both migration patterns and the debate over immigration.  The list of targeted cities apparently just keeps expanding.  As noted, Texas governor Greg Abbott took what otherwise might have been the slow diffusion of migrants from the border to cities and towns across the U.S., and directed it at just a few places.  The White House called it a “political stunt.”  Such expensive state policies of course do nothing to address the real issues as to why people are fleeing these countries in the first place.  The U.S. has to better address the realities of violence, poverty, cartels and the drug trade, and the inability of Mexico itself to deal with the migrant problem, both economically and politically.  The detrimental impact of climate change will only add to the nature of agricultural and industrial decline in that part of the Third World.

What is most disconcerting is that under former President Trump, parents and their children were deliberately split up.  Unfortunately, hundreds of parents who eventually were deported did not even know what had happened to their children in the U.S.  Such separation was inexcusable and inhumane.  Let’s hope that another potential Trump presidency would not introduce such a policy in the name of creating some kind of uncertain deterrence factor. 

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Jun 3

American Extremist Right-Wing Groups Have Gone Just Too Far

by bcurry

What do the Catholic Charities, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish Family Service and Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service (now called Global Refuge) have in common.  They are American charities that have helped new immigrants and refugees in numerous ways, but are now being threatened and under attack by extremist right-wing factions in the U.S.

As noted by the New York Times: “For decades, Catholic Charities and other faith-based organizations have played a crucial role helping federal authorities and local governments manage influxes of migrants. Their work has been funded with bipartisan support in Congress, even through the presidency of Donald J. Trump, who often vilified immigrants.”

These extremist groups have accused non-profit charities of flying migrants all over the country, profiting from illegal operations, trafficking women and children while holding them prisoner in their shelters, and facilitating migrant smuggling.  All ludicrous accusations to say the least! 

Via social media, extremists and their leaders are putting out all kinds of disinformation to their followers.  For his part Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, called Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish groups that help immigrants “demons” and “anti-American.”  The dangers are clear.  Many charity members are now literally being threatened and harassed, particularly after the names and phone numbers of staff members at shelters are being released via social media and other means.  On occasion, volunteers at the facilities have been sent home, and employees who continued to work were advised to keep a low profile.  Increased costly security measures have had to be provided at the shelters themselves for fear of attacks by extremists.

There is something terribly wrong when such well-known and respected charities are demonized in this way, with numerous Republican politicians jumping on the band-wagon.  They are only trying, as supported by their faith and values, to help people, no matter where they came from, what’s their ethnicity and how they arrived in the country.  It is indeed a sad reflection on the divisive nature of the American people views at this time that some could openly support such vicious actions against employees of charitable groups, who in turn are now being routinely targeted.

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Apr 19

What Does the Acronym “DINC” Stand For, And Why Has It Resurfaced Today?

by bcurry

During the early eighties, young people who were economically struggling were putting off marriages, children and buying homes.  They represented what became known as the DINC generation, that is to say “dual income no children”.  More recently, the acronym was expanded to DINCWAG, or “dual income no children with a dog”.  The acronym has again surfaced today.

Today’s younger generation, be they millennials or Generation Z, are facing tough economic times as a result of COVID and the current inflationary situation, where high interest rates and soaring housing prices have excluded many from the market.  In addition, rents in major urban centers are at an all time high and new residential construction was greatly impacted by COVID and problems with supply management.  Even in the high-tech industries, more and more layoffs are occurring.

Since the boomer period following the Second World War, birth rates in North American have been slowly declining.  Few people are having three or more children anymore and, with more women participating in the labour market and having professional careers, women are delaying having children into their thirties and even forties.  However, despite new fertility techniques, women are often restricted to having only one child as they become biologically older.  As well, a growing number of people are deciding not to have children, citing concerns such as climate change and inequality.  One suspects from recent studies that this situation will most likely become the norm in our society.

Even Elon Musk has entered into the debate by proclaiming that ‘civilization is going to crumble’ if people don’t have more children.  Musk further added that too many “good, smart people” think there are too many people in the world and that the population is growing out of control.  What does Musk mean by ‘civilization’?  Within his assertions lies an underlying perspective that what the industrialized countries need are more people born to so-called “smart people”.  This gets a little to too close to Adolf Hitler’s obsession with ‘racial purity’ and use of the word ‘Aryan’ to describe his idea of a ‘pure German race’ whereby the ‘Aryan race’ had a duty to control the world.  There are far right extremist white groups in North America who believe that current immigration levels from so-called ‘third world’ countries are diluting the population.  They are thereby loosing their traditional white privilege status, and feel threatened.  Such groups push for white women to have more children, thereby maintaining political and economic control within the society.  Don’t even talk about interracial marriage with these folks!

Let’s get real!  The so-called DINC phenomenon has more to do with the economic realities of our times.  It’s tough to have children in an age when the costs associated with raising children in our society are much greater than in the past.  Child care is not cheap and often women or men do not have access to adequate and affordable parental leave after the birth of a child.  The higher costs of higher education alone can be a major consideration, given that most parents want their children to graduate with a degree and go on to more lucrative employment.

With the current labour shortages in several sectors, the U.S. and Canada cannot afford to not use immigration as the primary means to fill jobs with skilled labour.  These jobs include everything from agricultural workers, construction workers, truckers to workers in the services sector.  Let’s face it, the DINC phenomenon is real and one sees it in communities on a daily basis.  The phenomenon has been gradually growing and was expedited by the COVID pandemic, which in itself has had an enormous impact on the world of work in North America.  New technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), are having a major impact and are creating a good degree of uncertainty among the younger generation.  Uncertainty is the key word.  Dealing with it will continue to be a difficult challenge for young couples today and into the near future.  Perhaps Elon Musk might want to come down from his pedestal and recognize the realities of the age in which we live.

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Jan 18

How Immigration Must Play More Significant Role When It Comes To Future Labour Force

by bcurry

Recently, reports are coming out of China that since the Communist Party took power, China’s population has started to level off.  Soon, India will surpass China in terms of population and population growth.  Much of the Chinese population decline was of course due to deliberate policies by governments, including the previous one-child policy, aimed at lowering its overall population growth.  However, such policies, while effective, have led to major concerns over future labour shortages due to low birth rates and an aging population.  It is reported that by 2035, 400 million people in China are expected to be over 60, accounting for nearly a third of its population.  Whether or not the government can provide widespread access to elder care, medical services and a stable stream of income later in life will also affect a long-held assumption that the Communist Party can provide a better life for its people.  In the case of China, few believe that its restrictive immigration policies will help out in the short-term.

What do these predictions have to do with the North American scene?  The fact of the matter is that both Canada and the U.S. are also facing issues surrounding aging populations, lower fertility rates and their subsequent impact on the labour market and social safety nets.  Simply put, in order to maintain a population via the annual birth rate, one needs to have at least two children born to each couple.  This is referred to as the replacement rate.  In 2020, Canada’s total fertility rate hit a record low.  In addition, in Canada more than nine million baby boomers are set to retire over the next decade, creating a potential labour shortage that, if unchecked, could raise health-care costs, upend pension payments and halt the country’s economic growth.  The current population of Canada is estimated at less than 40 million.  As the population ages, the median age had climbed steadily from 26.2 in 1971 to 41.1 in 2021, a trend observed in many advanced economies including the U.S.

This is why both Canada and the U.S. will continue to rely on immigrants to augment future labour forces.  Restricting immigration for political reasons, such as occurred under President Trump’s administration, will backfire when it comes to the rate of population growth.  Until recently, natural change — births minus deaths — had always been the primary driver of growth in Canada and the U.S.  However, even before the pandemic hit, these aging nations were already experiencing a decline in fertility and increase in deaths.  This is partly why Canada welcomed over 405,000 newcomers in 2021 – the most ever welcomed in a single year. The Federal Government is continuing its ambitious immigration policy by setting targets in the new levels plan of 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. 

However, there is one exception in Canada when it comes to increasing immigration.  According to recent data, the province of Quebec is taking a dwindling share of immigrants to Canada.  Under an agreement between the federal government and Quebec, Quebec controls the number of economic immigrants it takes each year.  In 2022, Quebec brought in roughly 15.7 percent of permanent immigrants to Canada, despite the province representing nearly 23 percent of Canada’s population.  Quebec’s current immigration policy is primarily based on its desire to have immigrants who are capable of living and working in French, Quebec’s official language.  The province’s Immigration Minister, Christine Fréchette, has stated that Quebec has to limit immigration to French speakers to protect the French language.  The minister further made it clear that the province won’t be boosting levels anytime soon.  However, strong opposition to this policy has surfaced within certain key sectors within Quebec, notably within business sectors which already are dealing with labour shortages.  For example, the Quebec Manufacturers and Exporters association said the province desperately needs these newcomers because there are labour shortages everywhere.  The association estimates that some $7 billion (Canadian) in manufacturing output that could have taken place last year was sidelined due to current labour shortages.

As in the case of China, the Quebec provincial government has implemented several schemes to encourage Quebecers to have more children, however with little notable success.  In both cases, government handouts like cash for babies and tax cuts, have failed to change the underlying fact that many young people simply do not want children.  Fertility rates continue to fall as incomes rise and education levels increase, and more women are participating in the labour force.  Other factors have contributed to the reluctance to have more children; including the burden that many younger adults face in taking care of aging parents and grandparents, the high costs of raising and educating children, and the increase in the number of working couples in order to make ends meet.  For these reasons, countries have fewer options other than increasing immigration to offset their aging populations and maintain their standards of living.

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Sep 16

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis – Treating People Like Garbage

by bcurry

It’s an old phenomenon, municipalities with full landfills end up transporting their garbage — although always under contract — to other jurisdictions.  Such was the case years ago when Toronto decided to truck its garbage all the way to Michigan state.  After all, locally no one wanted a landfill in their backyard.  In very recent years, there have been examples of provinces or states doing the same thing, but this time with human beings.

In Canada, this happened when former Alberta premier Ralph Klein cut welfare rates in the 1990s and offered one-way bus tickets to welfare recipients to travel to sunny British Columbia (B.C.).  A similar incident occurred in 2016 in Saskatchewan when two young homeless First Nations men were each given one-way bus tickets by Social Services from North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to Vancouver and Victoria, B.C.  Needless-to-say, the B.C. provincial and municipal governments were not too happy about any other jurisdictions’ policies to simply dump people when their own support services were already under severe stress.

Now we have Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, whose administration flew, on Florida taxpayers dime, two planes of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.  Apparently, they were not flown out of Florida but the flights actually originated in Texas.  Massachusetts of course is currently a Democratic-run state.  DeSantis said that Florida — not a sanctuary state — was sending migrants to Democrat-led states in response to their previous “virtue signaling” by declaring themselves sanctuary jurisdictions during former President Donald Trump’s years in office.  Around the same time, roughly 100 migrants aboard two buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, were dropped off in Washington, D.C. 

However, what about the impact on those migrants?  No one expected to land in Martha’s Vineyard, having reportedly been told they were going to Boston.  There is even some suggestion that, if the migrants were lured on to the plane under false pretences then it could have been illegal to do so.  Imagine, landing on a small offshore island with a population of about 20,000 people, an island accessible only by air and sea.  Obviously, the local authorities had few resources to care for these migrants.  As a result, Massachusetts authorities had to move the migrants voluntarily from Martha’s Vineyard to a military base in Cape Cod so they could find shelter and chart their next steps.  President Joe Biden responded, and rightly so, that the administration has a process in place to accommodate migrants at the border and Republicans shouldn’t interfere with such obvious “political stunts.”  The President further stated that “Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props. What they’re doing is simply wrong.”

As in Canada, any influx of migrants is covered under federal laws and the federal jurisdiction should be responsible for enforcing those laws.  Canadian federal authorities are expected to coordinate settlement programs with the provinces, often funded by the federal government, that are designed to accommodate the arrival of and application by migrants or refugees as part of the process used to facilitate their landed status.  This process was used to deal with a significant number of migrants who entered Canada from the U.S. during the Trump administration, fearing their deportation in the U.S. back to their countries of origin at the time.

But what of the extreme confusion, disorientation and trepidation that such migrants must feel when they are suddenly transported to other jurisdictions without due process under the law or a clear awareness of the circumstances.  In the case of those Venezuelan migrants who had endured harsh and dangerous conditions to arrive in the U.S., one can only imagine how the Congressional Hispanic Caucus reacted.  Just as past inappropriate interjurisdictional policies were condemned in Canada, so must Americans condemn these inhumane policies which leave localities scrambling to secure resources in support of the normal needs of human beings.  I must say that I’m not surprised that Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott stooped so low as to implement such inhumane policies in order to gain some sort of political brownie points.  After all, we’re not dealing with garbage here!

Canada Immigration Immigration Policies Refugee Policies Republican Party U.S. Canada Border US

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