No changes to citizenship guide, 5 years later

OTTAWA (CP) — More than five years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the federal government to revise the Canadian citizenship oath and exam guide, newcomers still study a book that contains a single paragraph on residential schools and they take an oath that doesn’t refer to treaties with Indigenous Peoples.

Calls for action Nos. 93 and 94 in the commission’s final report in December 2015 called on the government to update the citizenship guide and oath to reflect a more inclusive history of Indigenous Peoples and a recognition of their treaties and rights.

The Liberal government introduced a new law in October to adopt a revised oath of citizenship that will have new Canadians swear to faithfully observe the country’s treaties with Indigenous Peoples. Two previous versions of the law died with the 2019 election.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino told the House of Commons Indigenous and northern affairs committee last month that his department is consulting with national Indigenous organizations to revise the citizenship guide to include more information.

The five largest Indigenous organizations in the country told The Canadian Press that they have not been involved in any formal consultations recently with the government on the new guide. The organizations are the Assembly of First Nations, the Metis National Council, the

Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Native Women’s Association of Canada.

AFN Alberta Regional Chief Marlene Poitras said Indigenous Peoples’ history and culture should be reflected in the materials that newcomers study to become citizens.

“Absolutely, (the citizenship guide) should be changed,” she said in an interview.

“Education is key -- about who we are, how we existed here and welcomed the newcomers here, signed treaties, then had to deal with residential schools.”

Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said his organization worked with the Immigration Department in 2017 and 2018 on a new guide, but work has stopped.

The AFN asked the department in 2018 to seek out First Nations historians to ensure inclusion of First Nations content in the guide.

“Officials from (the department) have been in touch with AFN recently to discuss next steps and to share a new version of the guide. A meeting has not yet been scheduled,” the AFN said in a statement.

The department said in a statement the new citizenship guide will be published “as soon as we can,” noting that a launch date for the new guide has not been set.

Clement Chartier, the president of the Metis National Council, said his organization received a draft of the revised guide on May 3, 2018.

“Since then, I’ve not seen anything,” Chartier said.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said her party shares concerns about the slow progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls for action. She said the government’s introduction of Bill C-8 to revise the oath of citizenship came too late.

“This is the third time in which this bill has come before Parliament, and each time prior to this the government’s chosen to introduce the bill so late in the day,” she said.

Kwan said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has talked recently about the possibility of having an early federal election.

“Will Bill C-8 once again be railroaded and not be completed?” she said.

Poitras is worried C-8 would die in Parliament if an election is called, since that wipes the legislative agenda clean.

“I’m hearing that there’s another election and they still kind of go back and forth about the semantics of it,” she said, “It’s not going to go anywhere again.” The department said Mendicino is grateful to the parliamentary committee members for voting to sending C-8 back to the House of Commons for third reading he looks forward to seeing it pass through the Senate and become law as soon as possible.

Conservative Indigenous services critic Gary Vidal said it’s unfortunate that the Liberals once again seem to be missing an opportunity to act.

OTTAWA — Kelly Ernst recalls standing on sidewalks, waving to needy families in Calgary’s northeast as they opened their doors to pick up food hampers.

Ernst, vice-president for vulnerable populations at Calgary’s Centre for Newcomers, said the memory speaks to how COVID-19 hurt the community, socially and economically.

Ernst said the Skyview Ranch neighbourhood is one of the most diverse in the country, with a high proportion of visible minorities and newcomers. Residents are often employed in precarious retail jobs or in warehouses, Ernst said. Others work at the city’s airport or in the municipal transit system, both of which were also affected by the pandemic.

“Some of the first people to be laid off during the downturn were people in these precarious jobs,” Ernst said, adding many were left looking for “some way to get through this whole thing.”

Almost seven in every 10 residents over age 15 in Skyview Ranch, received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit in the initial month that the pandemic aid was available, one of the highest concentrations among over 1,600 neighbourhoods The Canadian Press analyzed.

Federal data, obtained through the Access to Information Act, provides the most detailed picture yet of where billions of dollars in emergency aid went last year.

The data is broken down by the first three characters of postal codes, known as “forward sortation areas,” to determine the number of active recipients at any time anywhere in the country.

The Canadian Press used population counts from the 2016 census to calculate what percentage of the population over age 15 in each forward sortation area received the CERB in any four-week pay period.

Some forward sortation areas in the data from Employment and Social Development Canada were created after the 2016 census and weren’t included in the analysis.

Over its lifespan between late March and October of last year, the CERB paid out nearly $82 billion to 8.9 million people whose incomes crashed because they saw their hours slashed or lost their jobs entirely.

Some three million people lost their jobs in March and April as non-essential businesses were ordered closed, and 2.5 million more worked less than half their usual hours.

The data from Employment and Social Development Canada show that 6.5 million people received the $500-a-week CERB during the first four weeks it was available, or more than one in five Canadians over age 15.

What emerges from that initial wave is a largely rural-urban split, with higher proportions of populations relying on the CERB in cities compared to rural parts of the country.

Neighbourhoods in Brampton, Ont., on Toronto’s northwest edge, had the largest volume of CERB recipients with postal-code areas averaging over 15,160 recipients per four-week pay period.

CERB usage also appears higher in urban areas that had higher COVID-19 case counts, which was and remains the case in Calgary’s northeast.

“As cities relied more on accommodations, tourism and food as drivers of economic growth, the more they would have been sideswiped by the pandemic, and larger centres have a higher concentration of jobs in these areas,” said David Macdonald, senior economist at the

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, who has studied the CERB.

“More rural areas of the country and certain cities that have a higher reliance on, say, natural resources wouldn’t have been hit as hard.”

In Skyview Ranch, census data says 12 per cent lived below the poverty line in 2016, and about three in 10 owners and four in 10 renters faced a housing affordability crunch, meaning they spent 30 per cent or more of their incomes on shelter.

Many live in multi-generational households, which the local city councillor said caused additional concerns about students and working adults spreading the virus to grandparents.

“These are real worries and challenges that members of my community have been facing throughout a pandemic,” said Coun. George Chahal.