Number 91 April, 1997

Is English Needed for Vancouver Cabbies?

Incredibly, some Vancouver cab drivers are resisting a new city council requirement that cabbies be able to demonstrate a certain minimum ability to speak and understand English. "Vancouver city council decided recently that it was time the city's taxi drivers met minimal standards, including a working understanding of the city's layout and a basic level of conversational English. By March 1, all drivers were required to register for a four-day Taxi Host course administered by the provincially-funded Justice Institute, which costs each driver $165 and which requires a Grade 8 level of English competence.

That requirement came as a shock to Vancouver's licensed drivers, of whom 80 per cent are members of the city's various ethnic communities, principally Punjabi. They say the standard of English among drivers is adequate for the needs of both the industry and tourists. ... 'It's bullshit,' says Kuldip Brar, [a burly turbanned man] who heads the Vancouver Airport Drivers' Association and who helped organize a protest. ... Mr. Brar says he doesn't know of any drivers whose command of English is so poor they can't pick up someone at the airport or a hotel and take them to a restaurant. .,.. 'How much English do we need for that?' Try telling that to Vancouver city council. Coun. George Puil says he stepped into a cab at Vancouver airport and received a blank look from an immigrant driver when he asked to be taken to 16th and Granville streets, one of Vancouver's major intersections. 'I think there's been a lot of dissatisfaction with the taxi industry and we have to tighten standards,' Coun. Puil says.

Coun. Don Bellamy says he has experienced similar problems and rejects arguments that very few drivers are incompetent in English. 'I don't buy that for one minute.'" (British Columbia Report, March 10, 1997) The article points out that the language problems among cabbies is a result of Canadian immigration. "With individual cabs, fleets and indeed entire taxi companies being owned by Punjabis, many immigrant members of that ethnic community gravitate to the industry in search of low-skill jobs. ... The spat over language is another sign of the growing strains that have resulted in Vancouver from Canada's liberal immigration laws.

Most of the country's 200,000 annual newcomers enter not as entrepreneurs or skill-rich independent-class immigrants but as family-class admissions. For relatives of people who have already immigrated, all that's required is a clean bill of health and absence of a criminal record. B.C., which takes a large proportion of the country's Cantonese and Punjabi-speaking immigrants, gets an equally large proportion of the mostly unskilled and English-deficient family-class entrants. A recent report by the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations' B.C. Statistics branch indicates that about half of immigrants who entered the province between 1991 and 1995 -- a total of about 100,000 -- possessed no English language ability at all.

The province now spends $68-million a year on English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction. That works out to $1,100 per full-time student per year. In some areas of the Lower Mainland, such as Surrey's Strawberry Hill district, some public schools have as many as 80 per cent ESL students. That's one of the reasons many parents in such areas are seeking out educational alternatives such as traditional schools and private institutions."

CRIME WATCH

Vietnamese Immigrant Tries to Drown Sons in Lake Ontario

"Police have charged a Mississauga man with murdering one of his young sons and attempting to murder the other after the boys were pulled from the icy waters of Lake Ontario [March 13]. ... Hung Van Nguyen, 29, is in police custody in Mississauga Hospital, where he's being treated for hypothermia" Hung had apparently taken the children, ages 3 and 6, about 100 yards offshore and then abandoned them to a brutal icy death. " The mother ... is three months pregnant and expecting a third child in the fall. ... The father worked nights as a pizza cook in a local restaurant. ... Efforts by police to interview the accused were initially hampered because he speaks only Vietnamese." (Toronto Star, March 14, 1997) Questions: How did Hung get into this country? Had he shown any previous evidence of mental illness? Why do we admit people who cannot function in either of our official languages?

Chinese Paranoid Schizophrenic Shot By Police After Assaulting Woman

Hong Kong immigrant Edmond Wai Hong Yu, 35, was shot dead by a Toronto policeman, February 20, on a TTC bus at the foot of Spadina Avenue. "'His violence was disturbing,' counsellor Cristina Nunes," said. (Toronto Star, February 22, 1997) "Police were called after Yu was seen hitting a woman he didn't know with the back of his hand before boarding the bus. ... Yu was waving what one witness decribed as a 'small; shiny hammer' at two officers. Police said a foot-long hammer was taken from the dead man, who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic." (Toronto Star, February 27, 1997)

The Star is a shameless propaganda organ for multicult and never misses an opportunity to spin a sob story for Third World immigrants. The only real questions should have been: 1. How had this deranged person entered Canada and had there been any previous indication of mental instability? 2. Why did the Ontario nearly two decades ago virtually empty its mental institutions and consign many deranged people to wandering the streets living in a miasma of their own delusions when, as so often happens when not under supervision, they fail to take their medication?

However, the Star highlighted a meeting of 250 angry Chinese. Dr. Joseph Wong, billed as "a community activist", ... said Yu had "'three handicaps: he was a visible minority, he was poor and had a mental disorder. All three have been reasons for discrimination in this country for many, many years.'" Metro Councillor Olivia Chow, another Hong Kong import who has had no trouble getting herself elected in this supposedly "racist" country, offered the fatuous comment that "police should engage people with experience in mental health issued when there are confrontations with the mentally ill." Yu had just beaten a woman unconscious. How was the officer to know that Yu was insane? How was he to know that he was not merely a jealous or angry husband or boyfriend? Equally distressing is the fact that there is no evidence that the Chinese community, so much up in arms after the shooting, had ever done anything to assist their troubled fellow countryman.

While Yu's caseworker Bob Rose had hailed Yu as "'a brilliant man'", he had, in fact, a history of violence and bizarre behaviour. "Staff at the Scott Mission say Yu had a history of violence and was barred because of it."

"Persian Pride" Gang Violence Rocks North Vancouver

"Three bullets tore through Mohammed (Mo) Mirhadi as he sat watching a gangster movie in a packed Lower Lonsdale cinema, March 1. His injuries were immediate and devastating. Mirhadi, 21, was shot at close range by his assailant: once in the forehead and once in the neck. He took a bullet to the abdomen. ... He lay choking on popcorn, vomit and blood. ... Mirhadi's death marks at least the fifth violent incident in eight months relating to a loose group of young North Vancouver men of Iranian decent.

Some of the men are associated with the Persian Pride gang from the North Shore. A little more than a month ago, the BMW convertible of another young North Vancouver man linked by police to the Persian Pride group was blown up on Roche Point Drive. ... Police sources [said] the victim of the car bombing was not co-operative. The car was destroyed in an early morning explosion. ... On November 30, Persian Pride member Mani Rezaei, 20, was shot in the back of the head as he sat in a car in the 900-block of Station Street in Vancouver. ... A shooter casually approached the car, opened the door and shot Rezaei with a semi-automatic handgun. ... While in hospital in Vancouver, Rezaei was charged with murder conspiracy, and the attempted murder of Siamek Zehedi, 24, of North Vancouver.

On June 25, 1996, Zahedi was shot several times after two masked intruders entered a house in the 300-block of West 21st Street in North Vancouver. Zahedi is paralyzed as a result of the shooting. ... On Wednesday, Const. Seaman confirmed that Mirhadi, Rezaei and Zahedi knew each other and 'they had some conflicts with each other.' ... While Mirhadi did not have an adult criminal record, he did have a record. In 1994, he was convicted of assault with a weapon. In 1993, he was convicted of break and enter in Port Coquitlam. In 1991, he was convicted of armed robbery in North Vancouver. ... In previous years, the Persian Pride name has been associated with teenagers who had constant run-ins with the law in connection with increasingly violent acts." (North Shore News, March 5, 1997)

In the case of Mirhadi, one wonders why, after his juvenile record of violence and mayhem, he wasn't ordered deported. Interested readers may wish to ask their MP, c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6. No postage is necessary.