‘Foreign workers’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 47 Comments

Adam Radwanski watches Jason Kenney watching Tim Hudak.

On Thursday, federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney – the point man for federal Conservative efforts to reach out to new Canadians – used much milder language than Mr. Hudak in expressing concern about Mr. McGuinty’s promise. The previous night, at a rally, Mr. Kenney applauded Mr. Hudak’s line about “foreign workers.” But glancing around him, he looked slightly uncomfortable as he did so.

Dalton McGuinty thinks Tim Hudak should apologize for his language.

Equality of opportunity

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 7 Comments

Jason Kenney comments on the skilled newcomer tax credit proposed by the Ontario Liberals.

“I think we should pursue equality of opportunity for all Canadians,” he said. “I don’t think it’s helpful for newcomers or anyone else to start dividing Canadians based on the longevity of their residency in Canada.”

Kenney said people have suggested a similar idea to him but he said he didn’t think it was fair. He said he didn’t think it was the solution to the province’s “very significant” unemployment problem.

Mr. Kenney’s government does have a Federal Internship for Newcomers program and has committed $22-million to the Bridge Training program for skilled immigrants, in partnership with the McGuinty government.

‘Highly discriminatory’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 26 Comments

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro imparts his feelings on the Ontario election campaign.

More than that, however, Mr. Del Mastro says it harkens back to the early 1990s when Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae was Ontario’s NDP premier. He brought in employment equity legislation to encourage the hiring of women and visible minorities. “My opportunities were severely restricted by legislation that was supposed to be creating equality,” Mr. Del Mastro said. “I was in my early 20s and thought how dare they create an entirely discriminatory policy that was going to affect my future.”

As a “young white male” at the time, Mr. Del Mastro said jobs were few and far between as a result. “And here we go again,” he said.

The issue in question—considered here by the Globe—is an Ontario Liberal proposal to create a tax credit for businesses that hire immigrants for jobs in professions such as “accounting, law, engineering and architecture.”

François Legault’s shameless pandering on immigration

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 8:15 PM - 18 Comments

When François Legault launched the Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec (CAQ), his all-but-confirmed vessel to re-enter Quebec politics, he addressed the group’s manifesto to “all those who want to change.” “It’s time to get Quebec moving again,” he wrote. Indeed it is.

Even for Legault’s critics, of which there are relatively few these days, it’s hard to find much to quibble with in his mission statement—education should be “the absolute priority”; culture and the protection of the French language are essential; public services should be… well, they should be better; and Quebec should do more to attract investments. As Vincent Marissal points out in this morning’s La Presse, Legault has so far proven himself enormously adept at “surfing on general ideas,” so much so that he’s emerged as the most credible candidate to replace Jean Charest as premier. Continue…

Jason Kenney strikes back

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 73 Comments

Reuters/Chris Wattie

Some stories are so odd nobody knows how to handle them. I don’t know how else to explain why Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s extraordinary public feud with Amnesty International has attracted so little coverage.

Here’s a senior Conservative minister departing from the Conservatives’ normal bland talking points and unleashing a written broadside against a critic. And Kenney’s sparring partner wasn’t a predictable target. It was the Canadian branch of Amnesty, one of the most revered human rights organizations in the world. But that didn’t stop the minister from calling Amnesty’s concerns “poppycock,” “sloppy and irresponsible” and “self-congratulatory moral preening.”

Here’s what the fuss was about: last month, Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews released the names and photos of 30 fugitives who’d evaded immigration authorities since being found inadmissible because they’re believed to be complicit in genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. In short, the ministers were asking the public to help track down fleeing war crimes suspects. The public has stepped up: since the ministers’ announcements, six of the 30 men have been apprehended and three of those six deported.
Continue…

‘There is nothing recklessly imprecise about highlighting those obligations’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 34 Comments

On Tuesday, Paul noted the exchange of written words between Amnesty International and Jason Kenney. On Wednesday, Amnesty International responded to Mr. Kenney’s open letter.

You begin by chastising Amnesty International for raising these concerns when we should instead be focusing on human rights concerns in countries like Iran and North Korea.  Minister, we most certainly do.  A casual review of our most recent reports, actions and news releases covers such countries as Iran, Syria, Bahrain, China, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Georgia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.  We do regularly point to areas where we believe Canada’s own human rights laws, policy and practice are in need of reform.  Universal human rights principles apply as equally to Canada as they do to other countries.  Furthermore, the stronger Canada’s domestic human rights record is; the greater our leadership on the world stage. 

‘The benefit of the doubt’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 3:27 PM - 40 Comments

Without commenting on Abousfian Abdelrazik, mind you, Jason Kenney suggests we put our faith in the government in cases such as his.

“I read the protected confidential dossiers on such individuals, and I can tell you that, without commenting on any one individual, some of this intelligence makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he said. “I just think people should be patient and thoughtful and give the government and its agencies the benefit of the doubt.”

But, as Campbell Clark notes in that story, the leak of CSIS documentation raises plenty of questions. Indeed, supporters of Adil Charkaoui want an inquiry into that leak.

More wanted

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 2:23 PM - 9 Comments

Vic Toews is interested in expanding the government’s most-wanted list.

Toews told Postmedia News the new list would include immigrants who were either convicted of a crime in Canada, or since their arrival it has been found they were convicted in their home country.

 Toews said he wants any new list to be both “sustainable and productive.” ”What I don’t want to happen is we do this for two weeks and then everybody goes away and forgets about it,” he said.

Open the doors wide

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 5, 2011 at 1:57 PM - 13 Comments

Geoffrey Cameron and Ian Goldin argue for more immigration.

We should also increase levels of migration because it can deliver far more for global prosperity than foreign aid and international trade ever will. Completely opening borders, World Bank economists predict, would produce gains as high as $39-trillion for the world economy over 25 years. These numbers compare with the $70-billion that is currently spent every year in overseas development assistance and the estimated gains of $100-billion from fully liberalizing international trade. If we want to revolutionize our foreign aid policy, we can start by giving more people a chance to work in Canada.

The debate on immigration policy is undermined in many countries by partisan agendas and dysfunctional politics. Other governments are tempted to choke off migration in the interest of short-term expediency and political gain. We must resist this trend, remembering that Canada is a society built with the ingenuity and hard work of generations of migrants.

What to do with refugees?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 2:55 PM - 1 Comment

Doug Saunders considers refugee policy and calls for an international solution.

What Lamey proposes is to internationalize Canada’s approach and expand it. He calls it a “portable-procedural” system by which “lawmakers could relocate asylum applicants to a sufficiently rights-respecting third country,” which would “thereby break the vicious circle of unfounded claims and ever-lengthening determination times within a particular state.” This system, he argues, would avoid situations like the ones facing Italy now or Germany in the 1990s, where a constitutional guarantee causes an enormous flood of illegitimate claims. Such a flood would likely stop, he posits, if claimants understood they could be relocated. To safeguard claimants’ rights in the country where they first land, Lamey proposes three non-negotiable requirements: the timely right to a full hearing, right to legal counsel and a prohibition on arbitrary detention.

… Lest we forget how our ancestors got here, and what they were very often fleeing, we ought to step above the headlines and start talking to our neighbours about something like Lamey’s proposal. As Zaiotti’s study suggests, Lamey’s ideas may not be as politically plausible as they look on paper, but there are good reasons to try. It seems odd that we are able to build multinational coalitions of armies with record speed to strike blows against tyranny on the other side of the world, but we are unable to join forces with our neighbours, at far less cost, to do some- thing about the boatloads of people fleeing those very same tyrannies. It is time for a coalition of the welcoming.

The “state broadcaster” and the state

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 11:25 AM - 75 Comments

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews laments that the “state broadcaster” is not being sufficiently deferential to the state.

“I have long since given up trying to understand the state broadcaster, or the CBC as we know them more popularly,” Toews said. “I find it so fascinating that they refuse to put the names of the individuals and pictures of the individuals on their network given that these are individuals who have been found by a tribunal not to be admissible in Canada and legal warrants have been issued for their arrest…

“I find it ironic that the CBC was always so quick to try to implicate our Canadian armed forces in war crimes in Afghanistan and never hesitant to mention that, but in this situation, when we actually have rulings from tribunals, they’re reluctant to involve themselves…

“They have no right to be in Canada,” Toews said. “And for the state broadcaster not to acknowledge that and work with law enforcement agencies is very disappointing.”

Wanted and unknown

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 4:53 PM - 32 Comments

One of the names on the most-wanted list of alleged war criminals is apparently something of a mystery.

“I have no idea who he is,” says Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Concannon has worked on the prosecution of crimes against humanity in Haiti since 1995, and is well-versed in cases from 1991 on.

“I’ve Googled him, I’ve looked through all the major reports, I’ve asked other people who work in human rights in Haiti and no one has heard of him,” says Concannon. ”It’s possible he changed his name, or he was working at a very low-level.” Concannon added he was puzzled that the Canadian government would label Prince a war criminal, given that “I don’t think there’s been a war in Haiti in a very long time.”

The Heritage Minister has questioned the CBC’s decision to not broadcast the names and faces of those on the list.

Most wanted

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 29, 2011 at 10:47 AM - 18 Comments

Jason Kenney talks to the Post about his most-wanted list.

Back in 2003, the Liberals considered releasing a similar wanted list but decided not to. They said they were concerned about privacy and vigilantism. Why did your government go ahead with this now?

“I read about that. If indeed they took that position I think it was bizarre and irresponsible. The notion that a foreigner who illegally enters Canada, has been found by our legal system to be involved in the worst kinds of crimes possible, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, who is under a deportation order and a warrant — the notion that such an individual enjoys the same privacy rights as a law abiding Canadian citizen is bizarre in the extreme. And the fact that people are concerned about this just shows the kind of ideological process obsession that some people have that overrides any consideration for the public interest or the integrity of our immigration system. So when this came to light, that we were not seeking the cooperation of the public, Minister Toews and I realized that this was a mistaken approach and that we had no privacy obligation to these individuals under the principles of both consistent use of information and public interest. And under the Privacy Act, we felt there were entirely reasonable grounds to release this information.”

Chris Selley notes that the word “alleged” should be applied to these individuals. One person is threatening to sue. Another is claiming innocence.

So what did I miss?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 25, 2011 at 11:13 AM - 52 Comments

The crime rate is at its lowest since 1973, but prison spending is set to boom. Jason Kenney is chasing fraudulent immigrants and war criminals. John Baird went to China. And the Prime Minister refused to move out of 24 Sussex.

And in other news, Bob Rae proved himself an adept and experienced master of the modern air travel system and/or totally big-timed Newfoundland novelist Kenneth Harvey out of a seat.

“Name,” called the woman, thrusting out her hand again as though to grasp hold of the drowning.

“Bob Rae,” said the pink-faced hobbit of a man, his glasses and suit looking a touch too big for him. “I’m on the delayed St. John’s flight.”

“No,” snapped the militant attendant. “Too late.” Her eyes caught on yet another lost soul and her fingers wiggled for his boarding pass, “Name.”

The man – identified as one of the blessed who belonged on the flight – was embraced as a comrade.

My eyes returned to Bob Rae to hear him utter: “I am Super Elite.”

The Great White tax haven

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 12 Comments

Getty Images

Until last year, Peter was a successful American fund manager, with roughly 200 employees in New York City and a personal fortune of $100 million. That’s still the case today, save for one detail—Peter is no longer an American. In 2010, the U.S.-born executive took the extreme step of renouncing his American citizenship. “I wanted to remove myself from a society and country that was heading for a financial catastrophe,” Peter said in an email interview through his Toronto-based lawyer, David Lesperance, who specializes in “tax-efficient citizenship, residence and domicile solutions.” In other words, Lesperance moves rich people to places where they’ll pay less tax. So which global tax haven lured Peter (not his real name) away from Uncle Sam? Was it the Cayman Islands? Switzerland? Monaco?

Try Canada. A year and a half ago, Peter moved to Toronto and is well on his way to obtaining his Canadian citizenship. He bought a luxury home in the city, as well as a vacation property. And now he’s in the midst of determining how much of his fund management company to uproot from New York and move across the border. “Five years ago, I would not have considered expatriation as an option, especially to Canada,” he said. “I always thought of Canada as a younger sibling of the U.S.—the same, but less advanced in terms of culture, quality of life, business opportunities and above all, taxation. I now see it as the same, but maybe better in the long term.”

As for those taxes, Peter says he’s fed up with his money going to pay for what he considers needless trillion-dollar wars in the Middle East, and to cover the staggering interest charges America owes on the money it’s borrowed to live beyond its means; by the end of this decade, at least 18 cents out of every $1 of tax revenue America raises will go to interest payments. “I know I get more for my taxes in Canada,” he says. “And the debt levels here are reality-based.”

Continue…

Why it’s the best time ever to be a Canadian

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 1, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 11 Comments

Dave Chidley/CP; Illustration by Taylor Shute

We are Canada. At 144 years we are neither young nor old, as nations go. And nations do come and do go, it bears remembering. You don’t have to be very old to appreciate that the world map that occupied a corner of your childhood classroom is a relic of another age; that borders once drawn in blood aren’t indelible at all, they are just lines to be moved, or bent or erased by popular will. Yet, here we are, still in this together, and doing rather well.

Like any worthy anniversary, it is deserving of celebration but also of the appreciation that future years together aren’t guaranteed, they must be earned, and mutually agreed upon. Back when Canada was a mere pup of 115 years, Ralph Klein, then the brash young mayor of a brash young Calgary, called Canada, “perhaps the only country in the world held together by curiosity.” He asked if such a confederation of interests and regions can endure. “[N]o one is quite prepared to give up on her yet,” he said, “as if we all have some lingering desire to see how this ongoing exercise in nation-building ends.”

And why not? No. 143 was not the easiest of years, but it was largely free of any soul-sucking existential debate on Canada’s future. There was a federal election, and no one died in the process. Economic uncertainty lingers, but we emerged stronger than the year before, and healthier in most every sense than a long list of wealthy, developed nations. And, yes, let’s not lose sight of that inarguable fact: we are rich.

Continue…

Are you one of us?

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 174 Comments

Michael Ignatieff reemerges with some thoughts on expatriation.

May 2 must have been the only Canadian election, and maybe one of the few elections anywhere, when expatriation became an issue that moved votes – in my case, the wrong way. I’d never say it was the decisive factor, but friends on the doorsteps kept reporting back: They all think you’re an American. To the degree that this issue mattered, the results of May 2 have a message: As far as expatriates are concerned, you can’t come home again if your destination is politics.

That’s how it is now, but pretty soon no one will remember what the fuss was about. The next generation is quietly redefining what it means to be a Canadian. They’re ignoring the attack ads and the chatter from the schoolyard of Ottawa politics. So many of the young Canadians I meet want to be global citizens. They want to be expatriates. They want a life that includes a couple of years in Mumbai or Shanghai, a summer teaching English in Tanzania, a year or longer working for some company in South Korea.

Where have Georgia's immigrant workers gone?

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 15 Comments

Karen Kasmauski/Science Faction/Corbis

Following in the controversial footsteps of Arizona’s lawmakers, the ruling Republican party in Georgia introduced beefed-up immigrant legislation earlier this spring. The bill, HB 87, empowers police to question the immigration status of criminal suspects and demands business owners use E-Verify, a federal database, to check a prospective employee’s immigration status. HB 87 will take effect July 1. But, just as in Arizona, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the legislation: last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with several rights organizations and individuals, challenged the law in federal district court. “This legislation turns Georgia into a police state,” says Azadeh Shahshahani of the Georgia chapter of the ACLU. Even Carlos Santana weighed in on the national debate: “The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” said Santana earlier this month at Major League Baseball’s annual civil rights game.

Along with opposition from civil rights groups, leaders of the agricultural industry—one of Georgia’s largest—are protesting the bill. Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, says migrant workers have “heard horror stories of people being harassed, being deported, being stopped at a licence check.” As a result, says Hall, farm workers are bypassing Georgia, causing a massive labour shortage in the state and sending the $1.1-billion industry into a tailspin. Hall reports farmers are experiencing labour shortages of up to 50 per cent, and estimates that a quarter of Georgia’s crops will go unharvested—representing some $300 million in lost revenue.

Although Georgia’s unemployment rate sits at 9.9 per cent, Hall says hiring domestic workers isn’t an option. “If we could get domestic workers to do our field work, we would,” he says, “but they’re not available.” Domestic workers might work in the cooler packing houses, but not in the fields. “It’s back-breaking work,” says Hall.

Continue…

This pot's for melting: Geert Wilders, Muslims, and Assimilation

By Andrew Potter - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 1:55 PM - 231 Comments

Some of you might have caught wind of self-described Islam-hater Geert Wilders’ little jaunt through Ontario last month, during which the controversial Dutchman performed his usual routine, viz., warning of increasing Islamicisation of Europe thanks to the failure of European multiculturalism to assimilate immigrants from muslim countries.  He also warned Canadians that our own multicultural model was similarly doomed to fail:

Wilders, noting that Canadians recently elected a majority Conservative government, said that if Canadians want to conserve their way of life, they need to pressure the Tories to adopt certain policies: curbing immigration from Islamic countries, expelling immigrants who turn to crime, stopping the construction of mosques and closing Islamic schools, where, he said, hatred against western values is promulgated.

That is from a disappointingly credulous report from my old colleague at the Ottawa Citizen, Robert Sibley.  However accurate Wilders’ views may be of Holland, and perhaps of Europe in general, when it comes to Canada (and the United States as well), they appear to be considerably at odds with the facts. Continue…

The French are coming

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Mathieu Lam was 23 when he decided to leave his home country of France in 2005 to work and travel in Canada. He was interested in the country’s reputation for natural beauty and its relatively high standard of living. Plus, he felt his prospects for employment at home were dismal.

Now, six years later, Lam is a permanent Canadian resident who runs a software development company in Toronto. He also operates a website called Programme Vacances Travail, which helps French youth who, like him, want to live and work abroad. “Canada has always been a country that attracted me,” he says in French, describing why he chose to come to Canada.

Lam’s not alone. Over the past decade, the number of French people coming to Canada has risen significantly. Permanent residents admitted from France jumped from 4,345 in 2000 to 6,930 in 2010. The increase in temporary workers is even more dramatic. In 2000, 5,932 temporary foreign workers entered Canada from France. By 2010, that number had risen to more than 17,000.

Continue…

Keeping Denmark's door shut

By Cathy Gulli - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

Marc Mueller/EPA/Keystone Press

A recent Danish report has provoked an uncomfortable debate about the economics of immigration. The report, based on data from five Danish ministries, indicates that the country saved $9.5 billion in housing and social assistance over the last decade by restricting immigrants from non-Western nations. By contrast, immigrants from Western countries were found to have contributed to the economy.

Denmark’s right-wing government and its allied parties have seized on the new information as validation of their anti-immigration agendas. Some politicians have suggested that the savings are, in fact, greater, once health and police expenditures are taken into account. And there are even calls to further clamp down on newcomers who “one can suspect will be a burden on Denmark,” as Søren Pind, the centre-right liberal integration minister, put it in a Danish newspaper.

But the country’s opposition parties see it differently: they say that the six per cent of Denmark’s population who are immigrants from outside the EU (totalling approximately 320,000 people) are being used as the “whipping boys” for Denmark’s $8.7-billion deficit. Marianne Jelved, spokesperson for the centre-left Social-Liberal Party, has called classifying people “depending on their value to the economy” nothing short of “degrading” and undemocratic.

The Bull Meter: Jack Layton on the Conservatives' immigration record

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 4:02 PM - 37 Comments

"One of the most disturbing aspects of what the Harper government is doing is that they’re encouraging more and more people to come here as temporary foreign workers… What we’re seeing is more and more of this focus on the immigrant as some kind of an economic unit."

- Jack Layton
April 12, 2011

Layton is right here. The face of Canadian immigration is changing, and it’s tilting toward economic considerations. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) if you look at permanent residents by category between 2006 and 2010, the only class that grew was the economic migrant class, from 138,251 in 2006 to 186,881 in 2010. Compare that to the number of refugees admitted: there’s been a decline since 2006, from 32,499 back then to 24,693 last year. Family reunification migrants have also been falling away, from 70,517 in 2006 to 60,207 in 2010.

Layton is also speaking no bull about the fact that temporary foreign workers have been a growing presence in Canada. According to CIC, in 2000, there were 116,540. In 2005, pre-Harper, there were 122,694, and then in 2009, there were 178,478. Last year, Statistics Canada reported that the number of temporary foreign workers admitted to Canada has been rising faster than the number of people admitted temporarily for other reasons with “three consecutive years of double-digit growth.” Whether or not this is “disturbing,” as Layton says it is, is a matter of interpretation. But the man’s got his facts straight.

Heard something that doesn’t sound quite right? Send quotes from the campaign trail to macbullmeter@gmail.com and we’ll tell you just how much bull they contain.

Sources:

Citizenship and immigration Canada Facts and Figures

Citizenship and Immigration Canada Permanent and temporary residents, 2010

Statistics Canada, temporary foreign workers

Statistics Canada, foreign nationals working temporarily in Canada

Policy alert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 3:07 PM - 54 Comments

Stephen Harper promises loans for new immigrants.

On Wednesday, that was a promise of bridge loans for new immigrants to help cover the cost of having their foreign credentials recognized in Canada. Harper said the plan is aimed at helping foreign-trained workers get the education and training they need to integrate into the workforce. The loan program, which was hinted at in the ill-fated federal budget, would cost $6 million a year and cover expenses associated with training, exams and schools fees.

The Bull Meter: Michael Ignatieff on his family’s flight from Russia

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 6:35 PM - 63 Comments

"My family lost everything in the Russian revolution. They started over again in Canada. They came here with nothing."

- Michael Ignatieff
March 20, 2011

In his family memoir, The Russian Album, Ignatieff describes his relatives as a group of privileged, well educated, and well-heeled Russians, who seemed to recover quickly from a tumultuous decade of resettlement following the Bolshevik Revolution. Paul, his grandfather, served as the last Minister of Education in the last Cabinet of the Tsar Nicholas II, and was friends with the likes of Vladimir Nabokov. Paul’s father was a Russian diplomat. Paul’s wife (Ignatieff’s grandmother) was born Princess Natasha Mestchersky on an estate, and travelled to Paris to learn the “rudiments of cooking” at Le Cordon Bleu.

According to the memoirs of Ignatieff’s late father George, The Making of a Peacemonger, when the family fled Russia as the revolution was unfolding, they ended up in London in 1919 with £25,000 in the bank. After living on a country estate for almost a decade, they moved to a rented farm in Montreal, with much of their wealth depleted. But by the time George reached high school, the Ignatieffs had the financial wherewithal to send him to the prestigious prep school, Lower Canada College. They also had connections: a contact of prime minister Mackenzie King fast tracked the family’s citizenship so George could go off to Oxford University on the Rhodes Scholarship in 1936. As Michael Ignatieff notes in The Russian Album, “[My father] presented himself to the world throughout my childhood as the model of an assimilated Canadian professional.”

Alas, it’s a stretch for Ignatieff to say his family came to Canada with “nothing.” To their credit, they made a seemingly successful transition to Canadian life, and rose quickly up the social ladder here.

Heard something that doesn’t sound quite right? Send quotes from the campaign trail to macbullmeter@gmail.com and we’ll tell you just how much bull they contain.

Sources:

Michael Ignatieff on CTV’s Question Period

The Russian Album by Michael Ignatieff

The Making of a Peacemonger by George Ignatieff