I heart Heather Mallick

CBC columnista extraordinaire Heather Mallick pulls a strip off the hairy back of Canadian propaganda aimed at new and prospective immigrants by equating this booklet with a national personals ad. God dammit woman, could you be more brilliant?

Case in point:

I rather adore Canada, and at times when I am at Wickaninnish in British Columbia or skiing at Lake Louise, Alta., or eating Nova Scotia oysters or drinking a Bloody Caesar (Canadian invention), I am actively in love with it. But at no time do I think we are God's gift to humanity. What arse would say it, or worse, believe it?

And again:

The booklet says Canadian values include equality (ask Muslim-Canadians now regularly referred to in newspapers as "brown-skinned"), freedom (ask a pregnant woman running the Christian-right gauntlet at a Fredericton abortion clinic), peacekeeping (ask a soldier fighting a pointless war in Afghanistan), and law and order (ask those Muslim-Canadian teenagers on trial for terrorism instead of adolescence).

And again:

For the sky is always blue as a jay in this land of moral and personable people devoted to their "parliamentary democracy," unstinting in their "environmentally sound" stewardship of the "clean and prosperous" country that their children will live in, speaking as one in their respect for "cultural differences" and their faith in "international peacekeeping."

No, seriously.

I'm not mocking the federal government's rendition of national perfection for the vulnerable immigrants most likely to fall for it. I understand the impulse. Canada needs skilled immigrants. It's the economic version of dating angst like, "Gosh, if we could just hook up with an emerging tech nation who has relatives who do plumbing on the side."

Get an education, eh

This op-ed in today's Globe is overall a well-meaning gesture, but why, oh why, do Canadians always compare themselves to the U.S. instead of to farther afield? Americans aren't exactly the pinnacle of innovation and academe, y'know? I'm beginning to suspect that the real "barriers" are the ideological walls built around North America...what a short-sighted waste.

Canada's relative under-production of graduate degrees, especially compared to the United States, is widely identified as a barrier to increasing our country's international competitiveness and productivity. For example, in 2004, American universities awarded twice as many master's degrees per capita as Canadian universities and about 35 per cent more doctoral degrees per capita than their Canadian counterparts. The OECD reports that Canada trails far behind the leading nations in terms of doctoral graduates.

This might have something to do with the cost of education in this country more than doubling in the time it takes the average grad student to put in six years plus a thesis...just a guess...did I mention I got my master's FOR FREE in Scandinavia?

And of course there is the obligatory nod to immigrants, particularly those elusive, highly educated ones:

Immigration will also play a critical role. Streamlining our immigration process to make Canada a more attractive option for skilled immigrants will be important. However, Canada cannot count on maintaining current levels of immigration of advanced degree-holders to meet future labour market needs. In an increasingly knowledge-based world, competition for highly-educated immigrants is growing in developed nations and emerging economies alike.

Consequently, more needs to be done to attract the best and the brightest international graduate students who remain critical to fuelling the country's pipeline of highly qualified personnel.

I agree wholeheartedly that the immigration process has to be streamlined. But then what? We've got a critical shortage of family doctors in this country while meanwhile there are surgeons driving taxis, not to mention, ahem, web marketing designers stuck in demeaning ghettoized translation jobs. I'm sure they're all writing home about how great Canada is. Why bother attracting more when we aren't making the most of the people we have here, enabling them to do what they came here to do? I'll say it again: what a waste.

Counting Canadians abroad

From an article in today's Globe and Mail:

Research by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada suggests there are perhaps nearly three million Canadians abroad. As a share of the population, Canada's "diaspora" is larger than the overseas communities of the United States, Australia, China or India.

...

Sixty-four per cent of Canadians abroad consider Canada "home." Interestingly, naturalized Canadians living abroad are more likely to call Canada home than native-born Canadians — a finding that challenges the view that return migrants are somehow less Canadian because they have chosen not to live in Canada.

...

Nearly 70 per cent intend to return to Canada to establish their principal residence. Overseas Canadians originally from British Columbia are most likely to return to establish their principal residence, followed by Canadians originally from Ontario. The two most important reasons for returning to Canada are family and quality of life. Fewer than one in five respondents identified Canada's health care or social services as a reason for returning.

...

The emergence of a Canadian diaspora is not a transient phenomenon. It is the flip side of large immigration inflows over the past two decades, and a function of global competition for skilled workers. To some extent, outmigration is a response to the difficulty that many new immigrants face in finding suitable work in Canada. But a far more important reason for the rise in Canadians overseas is the burgeoning economic opportunities in immigrant source countries such as India and China.

Beaten to a pulp

Canadian forestry industry realizes it's getting its ass kicked by Finnish forestry industry. Details on this and other interesting non-World Cup hockey related Canada vs. Finland facts laid out by the excellent Konrad Yakabuski in ROB online.