National Council of Women of Canada

Parliament gets a makeover; An influx of young women could help change Canadian politics for good,

2011-05-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

Parliament gets a makeover; An influx of young women could help change Canadian politics for good, writes Nancy Peckford

Ottawa Citizen

Fri May 6 2011

Page: A15

Section: Arguments

Byline: Nancy Peckford

Image makeovers - large and small - in the world of politics have a long history: Preston Manning worked on lowering his vocal register; Hillary Clinton lost the headband; and Jack Layton abandoned his trademark orange tie. But this week's election has arguably resulted in a radical makeover in the House of Commons.

The last Parliament boasted only 22 per cent women (68 women versus 240 men). Only five of these female MPs were under the age of 40, compared to 25 men, and Canada ranked 52nd in the world for its representation of women, the lowest in its history. The only female leader of a national party, Elizabeth May, held no seat and was virtually invisible on the national scene.

Oh, what a difference one election makes.

When Parliament re-convenes later this month, Canadians will see a distinctly different House. While the overall number of women elected has only risen by eight, the diversity and age range among women in Parliament will dramatically change.

Some Canadians may argue such change is unnecessary because MPs are elected to represent the interests of all of their constituents, regardless of gender. Yet, 90 years after the first female MP was elected, women indicate the perspectives they bring to Parliament -whether in committee, during debates in the House or at the cabinet table -are important.

The demise of the Bloc QuÃ©bÃ©cois and Liberal parties has meant that many seasoned female MPs who had made their mark over several terms won't be returning. The radically reduced caucus of the Bloc now includes only one woman, down from 14 in the last House. The Liberal party re-elected six women from last Parliament's total of 19.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, have succeeded in electing eight more women, including two mothers of young children, a real estate agent and an orthopedic surgeon. They will join a small but strong contingent of female Conservatives MPs such as former ministers Lisa Raitt, Gail Shea and Rona Ambrose.

Green Party leader, Elizabeth May will finally have a voice in the House as the only female national party leader. Her commitment to change the tone of the House could certainly help to create an environment that many Canadians will welcome.

But the real story is the women of the NDP. More than half of their caucus is from Quebec (57), and of these newly elected MPs, 27 are women, many of them under the age of 30. This represents the single biggest influx of young women into the House of Commons in Canada's history. It also represents one of its biggest opportunities, not to mention challenges.

Over the past decade in Equal Voice's work with young women, we have continually heard them point to a significant disconnect between the issues they care about and what's happening on the Hill. Many have a difficult time conjuring up the names of female MPs who have made a positive difference. Further, the heightened media scrutiny applied to younger female politicians such as Ruby Dhalla, Belinda Stronach and Ambrose, remains etched in their collective memories as a reason women should think twice about getting involved. Few tell us they want to stand for election.

With so many young women now about to sit in the House as representatives for their ridings, it's likely that these impressions are about to change. Despite their young age, most have postsecondary degrees and a number are committed community activists. All of a sudden, not only has the face of the House got much younger, but the issues that motivate many women, young and old -including safer communities, the environment, the global gap between rich and poor, child care and education, to name just a few -are about to get more frequent play on the Hill.

American academic and former congressional candidate Jennifer Lawless has written extensively on what it takes to successfully recruit women into political life. Her findings reveal that women are much less likely to self-identify as candidates for fear that they lack sufficient experience, expertise or networks to succeed. The domination of men in the political sphere has meant fewer women see elected office as a place where they could make a real difference and one where their talents and skills are welcome.

The 41st parliament could change these notions for good. It may not only re-frame the game for younger women but serve to inspire many mid-career women, not to mention our daughters and nieces, to aspire to political life. To which Equal Voice would say, it's about time.

Nancy Peckford is executive director of Equal Voice, a political junkie, and the mother of two young daughters.

Imporant information you should read about the gun registry

2011-05-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

On May 2nd, Harper won his sought-after majority government. Out of the 153 MPs who had voted to save the gun registry last September, 81 were defeated, including certain long-time gun control advocates who have defended it vehemently, such as Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois), Michael Ignatieff (Liberal), Mark Holland (Liberal), Marlene Jennings (Liberal), Tony Martin (NDP), and many others. They will be missed greatly. We know that the gun lobby has actively helped Conservative candidates, and targeted MPs who supported the gun registry using NRA-inspired campaigns. In spite of tremendous pressure, all six NDP MPs who switched their vote to help save the gun registry last September were re-elected. (A complete list of defeated Members of Parliament is available on request)

The election results are a major setback, and although we do not know exactly what will happen next, there is no doubt the Conservative government will try to repeal the long gun registry. You can count on us to do everything possible to stop them, or at least slow them down. We will continue our fight to defend the integrity of our gun control laws, and to save the long gun registry.

We know that the gun lobby will not be satisfied until gun control is dismantled. Conservative politicians and gun lobby groups are already in the media mentioning plans to dismantle the registry and even more .

Urgent Action is Needed

During the election, it became clear many candidates were ill-informed about the issue. Parliament is scheduled to return on May 23^rd, and we need your urgent aid in:

Contacting your newly elected or returning MP to share your support for the gun registry and for gun control. An unofficial list of MPs and their contact information can be found here.
Helping to educate your MP and your friends and family. The gun registry is an important public safety tool, and should be maintained. If dismantled, there will be no turning back. Please distribute our Myths and Facts Handout within your network. You may also link to it on your website or social network.

Gun Registry: Just the Facts

The evidence is clear, the gun registry is effective, efficient both in cost and function, and most importantly, saves lives.

Most firearm-related deaths in Canada are caused by rifles or shotguns. All guns are lethal, and any gun in the wrong hands is dangerous. We need controls on ALL guns.
Although there is more opposition to gun control in rural areas and in the Western provinces, there are also higher rates of gun death in those areas.
Gun control works: firearm death and injury have declined with stronger laws.
Police, public safety, crime prevention, women's organizations, and others support the existing law, and maintain that it contributes to public safety.
Registration is a one-time procedure, and it's free. The system is in place, and 6.9 million rifles and shotguns are already registered. Once the registry is scrapped and the data erased, there will be no turning back.
The gun registry is consulted over 14,000 times per day by police, including when intervening in domestic disputes.
The cost to administer the long gun registry is less than $4 million annually.

Why is the registration of all firearms essential?

Registering all firearms assists police in removing ALL guns from dangerous people, enforcing prohibition orders, and taking preventative action when there is a risk of suicide or domestic violence.
While screening and licensing firearm owners reduces the risks that dangerous people will have access to weapons, registration is essential to enforcing licensing, as it holds gun owners accountable for their firearms and reduces the chances that their guns will be diverted to unlicensed owners
The gun registry aids police investigations. For example, two men were identified and convicted as accessories to the murder of 4 RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, in part because a registered gun was left at the scene of the crime.
All illegal firearms begin as legal firearms. Controls over legal guns are essential to preventing diversion and choking off the illegal supply.

Parliament overview

While the election results remain unofficial until May 23, the current breakdown in the House of Commons is:

Conservative: 167 MPs

Opposition: 141 MPs

NDP: 102
Liberal: 34
Bloc Québécois : 4
Green Party : 1

The current breakdown in the Senate is:

Conservative Party of Canada: 52 Senators
Liberal: 42 Senators
Progressive Conservative: 2 Senators
Independent: 2 Senators
Vacant: 3 seats

Women Win One-Quarter of Seats in Newly Elected House of Commons May 3rd, 2011

2011-05-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

Women Win One-Quarter of Seats in Newly Elected House of Commons May 3rd, 2011

Ottawa: Canadians will welcome 76 women to the House of Commons when it re-convenes later this month, an increase of eight from the last Parliament. With last night's election results, women now make up 25 percent of Canada's Members of Parliament, a notable increase over the 22 percent representation in the 40th Parliament.

The New Democratic Party leads the way with 40 women elected, or 39 percent of its successful candidates. The Bloc Québécois elected one woman of the four remaining BQ Members in the province. Women in the Conservative and Liberal caucuses comprise 17 and 18 percent, respectively. For the Conservative Party, this represents 28 women elected. For the Liberal Party, it is a total of 6.

Further, the Green Party made history in electing Elizabeth May, its national leader, who will now serve as the sole female leader in addition to being the only elected Green Party member in the House.

"Equal Voice is pleased to see that women now constitute a quarter of all federal Members of Parliament. This is a historic high. In fact, it is the single largest increase Canada has seen in over a decade," said Donna Dasko, National Chair.

"It signifies that Canada is moving forward," noted Dasko.

Canada now ranks in the top 40 countries in terms of women's representation in national Parliaments.

"Although only 17 percent of the Conservative caucus is women, we urge Prime Minister Harper to maintain his commitment to appointing a cabinet with strong female representation," added Nancy Peckford, Executive Director.

Equal Voice takes the opportunity to applaud all of the women who ran in this federal election.

"It takes a tremendous commitment to the democratic process, considerable tenacity and significant work to stand for election. No one should unde-restimate the sacrifice that women make to put themselves forward," said Peckford.

"While twenty-five percent is a significant achievement, Equal Voice is working towards the day when women comprise a minimum of one third of the House, " underscored Vicky Smallman who oversaw EV's candidate tracking.

Equal Voice will be releasing more detailed breakdowns throughout the day.
National results (# of women elected of total seats - by party)

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For more information:

Nancy Peckford, Executive Director, Equal Voice - 613-292-7941 or npeckford@equalvoice.ca

Donna Dasko, National Chair - 416-920-9010 or ddasko@environics.ca

Where to look for results, and analysis

2011-05-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

The following links were sent to NCWC by Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA)

For analysis of individual ridings:

http://www.punditsguide.ca/ [English]

http://www.projectdemocracy.ca/ [English]

http://www.projetdemocratie.org/ [Francais]

X-Ray Magazine's Top Ten Election Sites:

http://xraymagazine.ca/23/2/ [English]

For analysis of the platforms and issues with respect to women's equality:

http://www.womensequality.ca/ [English]

http://www.egalitedesfemmes.ca/election2011.html [Francais]

http://ywcacanada.ca/en/pages/advocacy/issues/election [English]

http://ywcacanada.ca/fr/pages/advocacy/issues/election [Francais]

http://www.fafia-afai.org/files/FAFIA%20Election%20Briefing%20Note.pdf [English]

http://www.fafia-afai.org/files/l'AFIA%20l'election%20federal%20bref.pdf [Francais]

http://www.buildchildcare.ca/ [English]

http://garderiespubliques.org/ [Francais]

http://www.ffq.qc.ca/ [Francais]

For economic analysis:

http://federalelectionblog.ca/

Reminder - Monday, May 2nd is Election Day in Canada

2011-05-01T19:47:00.000-07:00

Don't know where to vote? Or what the hours are?
Go to elections.ca - put in your postal code, and you will find out. It's a good site too to find out answers to some pretty basic questions.

Where is my local returning office?

Voting process
	Where do I vote?
	NEW: What type of identification do I need to vote?
	Is there level access at my polling station?
	When is my polling station open on election day?
	When can I vote in advance?
	How do I vote by special ballot?

Candidates
	Who are the candidates in my electoral district?
	How do I contact the candidates in my electoral district?
	How many candidates are women and how many are men?

Employment
	How do I apply for a job as an election officer?

Child care takes centre stage

2011-04-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

Child care takes centre stage

‘My agenda is to see child care in Orillia addressed’

By MIRANDA MINASSIAN Special to The Packet & Times

A 37-year veteran of the child-care industry went to bat for families

at an all candidates' debate held at the West Ridge Early Education

Centre Tuesday night.

Despite the moderator's attempt to halt her, centre director Lucille

Desjardins took centre stage in an attempt to get all five North

Simcoe candidates to focus on early education.

"I may not be a Harper supporter. I may not be an Ignatieff supporter.

I may not be a Layton supporter… What I am a supporter of is someone

who is going to speak about this issue for this area in Ottawa," she

declared.

With 125 clients on a year-long waiting list, Desjardins is passionate

about this country's child-care strategy.

"There are 20 spaces in all of Orillia for babies — kids from zero to

18 months old. That is shameful," she said.

Recognizing that education falls under the provincial government's

jurisdiction, Desjardins believes it is up to the feds to ensure that

quality child-care spaces are available countrywide.

"It is the federal government that can make conditions attached to the

money they give to provinces," she said, vocalizing her support of a

national child-care strategy. "High-quality care should be available

to all children, regardless of where they come from or move to in this

country."

The Liberal, NDP and Green candidates were in agreement with

Desjardins' vision for a federal solution to the child-care issue.

Calling Stephen Harper's current Universal Child Care Benefit — which

provides families with $100 a month per child — grossly inadequate,

Liberal candidate Steve Clarke supports Desjardins's stance regarding

a nationwide strategy.

"This election, I believe, is a referendum on values. Do we need to be

spending $13 billion on mega-prisons or should we be investing in a

national child-care strategy?" Clarke asked. "Politicians and

political parties need to understand the differences between

investments and expenditures."

Valerie Powell sees early childhood issues as part of the larger issue

of sustainability — something she believes the Green Party addresses.

"You have to look at everything, the entire environment of supporting

people that can lead to ecologically sustainable lifestyle," she said.

"We need to build strong communities so that needs are met throughout

life."

Integrated policies that meet the Green's six core values — ecological

wisdom, non-violence, social justices, sustainability, participatory

democracy and respect for diversity — is the approach best suited to

meet community needs, Powell said.

"It shouldn't be a matter of how wealthy or educated your family is,"

said New Democrat Richard Banigan. "All children should have

opportunities."

The two parties against a national child-care strategy had differing

views on how the federal government should deal with the issue of

early education.

"Provinces have the lead in child care," said Conservative candidate

Bruce Stanton

As a provincial responsibility, Stanton remained heavily critical of

the Ontario's child-care spending record.

"The ongoing frustration with us is that any kind of agreements we

have with the province is that the accountability isn't there, " he

said. "There are set dollars earmarked for programs within the

province. We just can't find where the spending is happening. The last

report they did on day-care spots was 2006."

Christian Heritage Party candidate Adrian Kooger sees women staying

home to take care of children as a win-win scenario for families. Core

family values would be retained while job opportunities would be

created when working mothers vacate their current positions, he said.

"We would redirect money spent on unemployment and welfare to

strengthen families," said Kooger, whose party pledges $1,000 a month

for a stay-at-home parent. "Our position is that kids should be raised

by their parents and not by day-care employees."

Though vocal about her criticisms of the Harper government's move away

from the national health-care strategy before the meeting, organizer

Desjardins insists that the debate was a non-partisan event.

"I know that Bruce Stanton supports us. He is as capable as anyone to

take this issue to Ottawa," she said. "My agenda is to see child care

in Orillia addressed. Period."

Don’t Play Politics with Women’s Lives Says Equality Coalition

2011-04-29T08:10:00.001-07:00

Don’t Play Politics with Women’s Lives Says Equality Coalition

Women Tell Leaders to Support the Gun Registry and Women’s Safety

Ottawa, April 28, 2011 Women across Canada are endorsing an open

letter to party leaders urging them to preserve the long gun registry

to prevent an increase in gun deaths of women and children. The Ad Hoc

Coalition for Women’s Equality and Human Rights, representing 42

women’s groups, unions and human rights organizations, is calling on

women to sign on to support the long gun registry as a tool for

women’s safety.

“We issued this letter to say to party leaders, don’t play politics

with women’s lives,” said Paulette Senior, CEO of YWCA Canada, the

nation’s single largest provider of shelter for women and children

fleeing violence, “the registry is here to stay. That was confirmed

when Bill C-391 failed. And it failed because Canadians understand the

long gun registry is a modern database that police use every day for

their own safety and always before they go on a domestic violence

call. People got the message that ending the registry is not in the

best interests of women living with violence.”

“Women across Canada know the gun registry works,” said Barb Byers,

Executive Vice President of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Women know

it makes our communities and our workplaces safer. It’s that simple.

Doing away with it would make women less safe. It would make our

workplaces less safe, and it would make the jobs of police officers

and first responders less safe.”

Long guns are the guns most commonly used in spousal homicides,

especially when women are the victim. The Domestic Violence Death

Review Committee found firearms to be present in 47% of domestic

homicides in 2007. Since the registry’s creation, gun deaths in Canada

have fallen significantly. In 1995, 1125 Canadians were killed with

guns. In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available,

Statistics Canada reported 723 deaths due to firearms. By 2009, the

rate of murders with rifles and shotguns had dropped by more than 62%

from 1995.

Police and physicians on the public record in support of the long gun

registry include the Canadian Association of Police Boards, the

Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of

Police, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and the

Canadian Paediatric Society.

Supporters are invited to sign on to the Open Letter at

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supportguncontrol/

Right to Water

2011-04-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Assembly of First Nations, Amnesty International and Council of Canadians urge political leaders to recognize the human right to water

OTTAWA, April 28 /CNW/ - The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Amnesty International Canada and the Council of Canadians are calling on all political parties to recognize explicitly the human right to water and sanitation and to commit to ensuring that Canada meets its obligations in upholding these rights for people in Canada.

On July 28, 2010, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution recognizing the right to clean and safe drinking water and sanitation. Canada and a small number of other countries abstained from the vote while the resolution was strongly supported by African, Asian and Latin American countries. On September 30, 2010, the UN Human Rights Council affirmed that the right to water and sanitation is already established in international law under legally-binding UN human rights covenants. Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians chairperson and former Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the UN General Assembly, says, "The United Nations has already recognized water and sanitation as a human right, which means that every government must now come up with a plan of action based on the 'obligation to respect, protect and fulfill' these rights. I call on the next federal government to explicitly recognize these rights and for all political parties to outline what they will do to ensure that Canada meets its obligations."

AFN National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo stated, "We have made health and safety one of our priorities in this federal election with access to safe and potable water as a basic human right. Unfortunately, we still have over a hundred communities operating under boil-water advisories. First Nations have inherent rights to water in their traditional territories and these rights were never given up. First Nation leaders have called for Canada to respect the Aboriginal and Treaty right to clean drinking water and want to work in partnership with the next government on this priority, consistent with the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.''

Amnesty International Canada Secretary General Alex Neve says, "Canada has lost its standing as a world leader in pressing for human rights. One of the most blatant failings has been in respect to the situation of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Canada should recognize that clean, drinkable water and sanitation are basic human rights. Canada should also act to ensure that these rights are respected, protected and fulfilled in Canada by working with First Nations communities to address their urgent water and sanitation needs."

The Assembly of First Nations is the national organization representing First Nations citizens in Canada.

Follow AFN and National Chief Atleo on Twitter @AFN_Updates, @AFN_Comms and @NCAtleo.

Media Release - Campaign 2000

2011-04-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

Three out of four cross-Canada parties commit to reduce poverty; Conservatives ignore poverty reduction and inequality

Toronto - Citing the persistence of poverty and growing gap between the rich and poor across Canada, national anti-poverty coalition Campaign 2000 today expressed satisfaction that three out of four parties have committed to a poverty reduction plan.

Reducing poverty and inequality is not just a moral issue, but an essential element in managing the economy. Poverty and inequality drive health care and crime control expenditures, lead to skilled labour shortages through poor educational attainment, and generate social conflict.

Poverty persists across Canada with nearly one in ten people, including
610,000 low-income children and their mothers, living in poverty (2008 LICO after-tax). These most recent statistics do not reflect the current situation or the full impact of the recession and continuing economic disruption. These families still feel the double burden of job loss at the workplace and increased economic stress at home.

"We've analyzed the party platforms and found that all parties except for the Conservative Party have plans for poverty reduction in their platforms. The Liberals, New Democrats and Greens have all agreed to develop a plan to address poverty, to establish a system of universally accessible, high quality early childhood education and care services and to develop a national strategy for affordable housing including funds for social housing. The Bloc Québécois also supports a plan to make poverty history in Canada that recognizes Québec's particular role in social policy," said Laurel Rothman, National Coordinator of Campaign 2000. "These commitments are essential to an effective strategy to reduce and eventually eradicate poverty in Canada."

"We do know how to reduce and eradicate poverty - northern European countries have child and family poverty rates below 5%, without sacrificing vibrant economic growth or prosperity. Those countries invest in people throughout the life cycle and everyone in society benefits. In Canada, the majority of provinces have adopted or are all working on poverty reduction plans. But the missing link is an active federal government role," said Sid Frankel, University of Manitoba and Social Planning Council of Winnipeg. "That's why this federal election is so important - we need Canada's next federal government to commit to a plan to reduce poverty levels by at least 25% over the next 5 years and enshrine that in legislation."

To view a full copy of the Campaign 2000 Election Statement and the grid summarizing party platforms on poverty, visit www.campaign2000.ca <http://www.campaign2000.ca/> .

Campaign 2000 is a non-partisan cross Canada coalition of over 120 organizations committed to ending child & family poverty in Canada.

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For further comment please contact:

Laurel Rothman, National Coordinator, Campaign 2000.Tel: 416-595-9230 x 228 or 416-575-9230

Sid Frankel, University of Manitoba and Social Planning Council of Winnipeg.
Tel 204-295-3749

or 204-474-9706.

National Council of Women of Canada Urges Women to Vote May 2nd

2011-04-28T09:53:00.001-07:00

Media Release

ELECTION 2011

Thursday April 28^th,2011

For Immediate Release: National Council of Women of Canada Urges Women to Vote May 2nd

It has never been more important than right now for women in Canada to vote and make their voices heard according to Mary Scott, President of the National Council of Women of Canada. The Council represents over 500,000 women and more than 40 organizations across the country. With 21 percent of women undecided as reported by a Nik Nanos poll, women’s votes matter in deciding this election.

Women’s votes are crucial if they are to show their impatience with the lack of a clear plan for poverty reduction; a system of accessible, affordable and quality early childhood education and child care; affordable housing; equal pay for work of equal value; funding to support advocacy; defense of the long gun registry; neglect of the environment; elimination of violence against women and otherwise encourage factors that promote the equal participation of all women in Canadian society. Disregard for issues that matter to women must be stopped.

It’s time to follow in the footsteps of women like the Famous Five and those who insisted that women be included in the Constitution and let everyone know we will not be silenced says Scott.

Women must think for themselves and ensure that they make the best use of their vote. Every vote matters. There’s no time like the present to give those in power a strong message. Women count.

Get out to vote and organize your friends and family to join you.

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For further information:

Mary Scott, President

1 204 888 2996

Monica Cullum, Vice President

1 613 567 0958 or 416-250-7575

National Council of Women of Canada

ncwc@magma.ca

http://www.ncwc.ca

Election Blog: http://nationalcouncilofwomenofcanada.blogspot.com/

Aboriginal Women and Girls

2011-04-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

Aboriginal Women and Girls

Aboriginal Women (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) in Canada experience multiple layers of discrimination and hardships. These include the impact of Canada's historic government policies (especially residential schools), and double discrimination based on race and gender. The undermining of Aboriginal culture and social fabric has taken a high toll on Aboriginal women.

Violence

Aboriginal women experience alarming rates of violence. Aboriginal women are eight times more likely to be murdered, and three times more likely to be abused by their partner than non-Aboriginal women. For Inuit women, the rate of violence is 14 times the national average. Symptomatic of this is the high number of missing or murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. Racism, sexism, poverty, historic government policies, substance abuse and marginalization contribute to this violence.

Poverty

Aboriginal women experience high levels of unemployment, low wages and receipt of social assistance. As a result, they experience high rates of poverty-related diseases such as diabetes, obesity and poor nutrition. The unemployment rate for Aboriginal women is 13.5%, compared to 6.4% for non-Aboriginal women. In 2005, Aboriginal women received a median income of $15,600 - $3,600 less than non-Aboriginal women. Aboriginal women are concentrated in low-paid jobs. 59% work in sales, service, finance or administration jobs. Adding to the marginalization of Aboriginal women and children is the underfunding of child welfare services on reserves.

Education

Despite multiple challenges, Aboriginal women are strong and resilient. This is reflected in Aboriginal women's education levels. Aboriginal women attend school at higher rates than both non-Aboriginal women and Aboriginal men. Aboriginal women are nearly twice as likely as Aboriginal men (7.1% versus 4.5% respectively) to have a University certificate, degree or diploma. This is despite the fact that many Aboriginal women are raising children alone and in poverty. High fertility rates (2.6 children versus 1.5 for non-Aboriginal women) mean Aboriginal women require family, social and economic supports to achieve education and career goals.

Consider asking your candidate the following questions:

Q. Does your party support policies that will recognize and restore the role of aboriginal women and girls in society?

Q. Will you party stop the persistent underfunding of programming and services delivered to First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls?

Law and Order Agenda -

2011-04-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

Despite media attention and Government claims to the contrary, crime rates have fallen. In 2009 nearly 2.2 million crimes were reported to police, which is 17% lower than ten years ago. The law reforms introduced recently will not prevent crime, and they will cost tens of billions of dollars.

Women are the fastest-growing prison population. The so-called "Law and Order Agenda" will not make women safer, and it will drain resources from services necessary for women's substantive equality. Depending upon the prison and the needs of women, it costs anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000 per year to keep a woman in prison. If she has mental health issues, she will likely be held in segregation and subject to high security.

Under-protected Women in Canada are under-protected. Women experience the highest rates of poverty in Canada. This is compounded by victimization, substance use, mental health issues, racialization and disabilities. Women commit crime, in many cases, to survive.

Over-policed Crime rates are down, yet women are the fastest- growing prison population. Aboriginal women are overrepresented in the prison system. An expensive prison complex will not address the economic and social issues that women in Canada face. Prisons do not guarantee rehabilitation or health care and education programs that meet women's needs.

Unaffordable The "Law and Order Agenda" is expensive compared to alternatives. The planned changes to the prison system will cost taxpayers an estimated $9.5 billion by 2015-2016. It costs on average $185,000 per year to imprison a woman in Canada.

The "Law and Order Agenda" Displaces Children When you imprison women, you imprison mothers. 60% of children whose mothers are in prison live with grandparents, 17% with other relatives, and 25% live in foster care or group homes. Interestingly, almost 90% of children whose fathers are in prison continue to live with their mothers.

The inaccessibility of social programs, combined with increased imprisonment, are not resulting in any increased safety or equality for Canadian women and children. Women in prison experience high rates of depression and self-injury. 80-90% have survived sexual and/or physical abuse. 34% of women in federal prisons are Aboriginal. When they leave, they deal with trauma, violence, poverty, and lack of access to good jobs, health care and mental health services.

The Government of Canada needs to make Canada safer for women and girls by:

* Ensuring access to participation in a knowledge-based society.
* Creating access to decent work.
* Increasing rehabilitation programs and supports in prison and the community.
* Implementing a national strategy with specific policies and resources dedicated to ending violence against women and girls.
* Creating equal access to health, mental health and education programs.

Implementing the recommendations of the Arbour Report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

To find out where your candidate stands on the "Law and Order Agenda" consider asking the following questions:

Q. If elected will you work to repeal the unnecessary criminal justice reforms and reallocate resources to develop social, educational and health services?
Q. Will you reinstate the Court Challenges Program?

Petition in support of the long gun registry

2011-04-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

Please visit http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supportguncontrol/ to sign this petition in support of the long gun registry.

TO:

Stephen Harper, Leader, Conservative Party
Michael Ignatieff, Leader, Liberal Party
Gilles Duceppe, Leader, Bloc QuÃ©bÃ©cois
Jack Layton, Leader, NDP
Elizabeth May, Leader, Green Party

Violence against women is a $4 billion problem in this country. Every year, 100,000 women and children leave their homes fleeing violence and abuse. Almost 20,000 of those come through the doors of the 31 shelters operated by YWCAs across Canada looking for safety, for a roof over their heads, for care and support.

As the nation's largest single provider of shelter to women and children fleeing violence, YWCA Canada knows the long gun registry is a public safety tool that makes womenâ€™s lives safer. Across the country, our shelters tell us the long gun registry is useful and needed. Our rural shelters tell us police consult the long gun registry every time they go to a domestic violence incident. These are not automatic checks, but deliberate and specific searches for the presence of firearms in the home, especially long guns.

Among service providers working in violence against women there is no rural-urban divide on the registry. YWCA Canada's national network of shelters is urban and rural, and includes Sudbury, Niagara Region, Brandon, Prince Albert, Lethbridge, Peterborough, St. Thomas-Elgin, Saskatoon, Banff, Yellowknife and Iqaluit, where shot guns and rifles are part of the culture. In every province and territory, the shelter and transition house associations support the long gun registry.

Why? Because shot guns and rifles are the guns most commonly used in spousal homicides, and especially when women are the victims. Not handguns. Shot guns and rifles. In the last decade, 71% of spousal homicides committed with a firearm involved a shot gun or a rifle.

Women's voices from rural Canada tell the tale. Lyda Fuller, Executive Director of YWCA Yellowknife, which operates shelters in Yellowknife and Fort Smith for women and children fleeing violence, reports that, â€œWomen have told us that the guns used here in the North predominantly for hunting – that is, llong guns – are also used to intimidate, subdue and control them. Wee hear this over and over again, in small communities without RCMP and in larger communities with RCMP. Women do not want these guns to be unregistered, but do not feel safe expressing this opinion other than in whispers to people who may be able to voice these "unpopular" opinions and who may be heard.

When YWCA Canada addressed the House Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Lyda Fuller said, "Please make it clear that it is not city-born, city living folks who are asking for this registry to continue; it is the voices of northern women who fear for their lives and their mental health who are asking for protection. We see women who have experienced years of brutal intimidation. These women cannot safely express their need for protection themselves, and it is up to Canada to understand this and respond in an appropriate way."

Dismantling the long gun registry would not serve the interests of women and children vulnerable to violence. It would put them and the police services who respond to domestic violence at greater risk.

As a nation, it's time to listen.

Paulette Senior, CEO YWCA Canada

Access to Education on Reserves

2011-04-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

Students march for First Nations equality; Children will take to Parliament Hill to push for better access to education on reserves, writes Matthew Pearson

Ottawa Citizen

Sat Apr 23 2011

Page: C6

Section: City

Byline: Matthew Pearson

Inspired by a Cree teen who dreamed of attending a safe, comfortable school in her isolated James Bay community, hundreds of Ottawa students will march on Parliament Hill Wednesday to demand the federal government provide First Nations children on reserves with equal access to education.

"It makes no sense to them that there's such an inequality in Canada," said Danielle Fontaine, the Grade 3 and 4 teacher at Lady Evelyn Alternative School.

The Parliament Hill rally is part of a national day of action in memory of Shannen Koostachin, an aboriginal teen killed in a car crash last May.

For years, the children of her hometown of Attawapiskat, a fly-in First Nations community, have waited for the federal government to rebuild the elementary school, which was closed in 2000 after a large diesel spill contaminated the ground beneath it. A smattering of portables were installed as a temporary solution, but years of neglect have not been kind to them. Some have no heat, forcing students to wear winter coats inside. Others have fire doors that are warped or frozen shut in winter.

Frustrated and feeling abandoned, the children launched a letter-writing campaign, calling on the government to build them a new school. They also turned to Facebook and YouTube to reach non-aboriginal students across the country, urging them to support the cause.

In 2008, the Grade 8 class cancelled a trip to Niagara Falls and used the money to send three representatives to Ottawa to meet face-to-face with Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl.

"They decided, rather than go on a class trip, they were going to go confront the government," said Charlie Angus, the Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay.

Koostachin was one of them. The 13-year-old demanded action from Strahl, convened a news conference with national media and later gave a raw and rousing speech at a conference in Toronto. She was soon nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize and the campaign is the subject of a documentary produced by Heartspeak, a youth engagement organization.

Koostachin eventually moved south, where she lived with Angus's family, to attend a non-native high school. She was living with another family in New Liskeard when she died.

"I cry every day about Shannen," Angus said.

In the days following her death -amid waves of grief -individuals and organizations from across the country began connecting. No one could let Koostachin's message die with her, so Shannen's Dream was born. The campaign's goal is to raise public awareness about the plight of reserve schools and address the lack of funding.

"People need to realize what's been happening," Angus said.

Like many, Fontaine said she was shocked when she learned more about the situation. "I haven't been able to sleep since I heard about Shannen's Dream," she said.

Learning about the dire conditions in Attawapiskat has given 11-year-old Zoe Bevan a whole new appreciation for her school and its stocked library shelves, bright gymnasium and warm classrooms.

"The children in Attawapiskat should be the ones complaining, not us," she said.

Her classmate, Ian Bourrie, said he worried it might be hard for young people from the community to find jobs if they don't get a proper education.

Madeline Cuillerier, another Grade 6 student, added the government has continually broken its promise to fix the school.

"They have enough money to build a school, but they just choose to spend it on other things that aren't as important," she said.

More than 50 schools on First Nation reserves across Canada have been closed or condemned or are operating in substandard condition, Angus said. He introduced a motion in the House of Commons last fall calling on the government to close the funding gap for the schools and says it will be his first order of business if he's re-elected May 2.

Interesting comments to voters on Middle East Issues

2011-04-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Elections Guide gives recommendations to voters on Middle East Issues

For Immediate Release

Montreal, April 18, 2011 -- On April 15, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) released its Elections Guide for the 2011 Federal elections. The guide provides useful resources and information to enable CJPME's 33,000 adherents to participate actively in Canada's electoral process. It also carefully compares the performance of the different federal parties on issues affecting peace and justice in the Middle East, as well as on the rights of Canadians of Middle East origin.

The full Guide can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/3zaocfw. While the full guide does not yet exist in French, CJPME has packaged its write-up on the Bloc Quebecois in a separate document which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3qdyr39.

In addition to summarizing party platforms on the Middle East, the Guide reviews the performance of dozens of individual MPs on these issues, identifying "swing" ridings across the country. It suggests alternatives for those parties and candidates who do not have a strong Middle East record. The Guide reflects the urgency felt by CJPME and many Canadians to salvage Canada's values and international reputation, to help ensure that principled and balanced parliamentary leaders are elected.

"If the current Conservative administration strengthens its position through this election, Canada's international stature and humanitarian institutions will suffer irreparable damage," says CJPME President Thomas Woodley. CJPME believes that the Guide will enable people to play an active role in shaping the outcome of the election, no matter where they may live.

CJPME notes that Canadians have become much more aware since the 2008 election of Canada's role in propping up less-than-legitimate regimes in the Middle East. CJPME's Election Guide will enable people concerned about justice and peace in the Middle East to speak up confidently in this crucial election. "We can shape Canada's role in the world. Getting active in this decisive election is an opportunity no Canadian should pass up," concludes Woodley.

#####

Violence Against Women and Girls in Canada

2011-04-25T13:58:00.001-07:00

Violence Against Women and Girls in Canada
Canada urgently needs a national strategy to end violence against women and girls. Male violence affects all women and girls in Canada, but racialized women, Aboriginal women, women living with disabilities, and recent immigrant women are more vulnerable, as a result of poverty, marginalization and discrimination.

Reality:

Between 2002 and 2009, 1 in 5 murders in Canada were spousal homicides, 83% of which were murders of women.S

Spousal homicides of women declined for three decades, until 2006-2009 when they stopped declining and remained stable.
76% of victims of criminal harassment (stalking) are women, and over half of these were harassed by a former or current intimate male partner.
Women are over 6 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than men. Men are the assailants in 97% of sexual assaults.
Less than 1 in 10 sexual assaults are reported to the police.

Disproportionate Reality:

There are 582 documented cases of murdered or missing Aboriginal women and girls. This represents approximately 10% of female homicides in Canada, despite the fact that Aboriginal women make up only 3% of the total female population in Canada.

Violence against women affects children:

Nearly 360,000 Canadian children witness domestic violence every year. 88% of the missing and murdered Aboriginal women were mothers, whose children are left behind.

Effective gun control under attack:

Canada’s gun control laws, enacted after the 1989 École Polytechnique Massacre, reduced gun-related spousal homicide by 50%. Long guns are the guns most likely to be used to murder women. Despite this, the Conservatives have introduced bills to abolish the long gun registry. Canada needs strong gun control to disarm violence against women.

Urgently needed:

To escape violence, women need:

free or low-cost family law legal aid;
adequate and affordable housing;
a national, non-profit child care system
a guaranteed liveable income, and economic parity with men
supports and resources provided by the autonomous women’s movement which prioritizes women’s liberty and equality;
culturally-relevant resources and policies dedicated to ending violence against Aboriginal women and girls
immigration policy that protects women, both with status and undocumented, who are escaping violence to and/or within Canada.

It is not acceptable for various levels of government to hide behind jurisdictional arguments in defence of their own inaction.

Male violence maintains women’s inequality in Canada. Government inaction to stop means women’s and girls’ fundamental freedoms enshrined in Canada’s constitution continue to be violated.

Consider asking your candidate the following questions:

Q: How will your party work with grassroots feminist and Aboriginal anti-violence groups to develop a national strategy to end violence against women?

Q: How will you party ensure that federal funds flow to grassroots supports and services, such as shelters and rape crisis centres, and culturally-specific violence against women programs?

Canada Pension Plan

2011-04-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Pensions must be expanded: expert

The Leader-Post (Regina)

Thu Apr 21 2011

Page: B1 / Front

Section: Business & Agriculture

Byline: Neil Scott

Expansion of the Canada Pension Plan is the best way to solve the looming problem of providing good retirement income for Canadians, according to a featured speaker at a pension conference in Regina.

Sylvain Schetagne, a senior economist with the Canadian Labour Congress, said many workers are facing an uncertain future, as they try to cobble together enough income from government pension plans, company pension plans and personal savings to retire in comfort.

Expansion of the existing Canada Pension benefits, so the benefits would ultimately double, is the best solution, Schetagne said.

"It's something that works; why not expand it?" Schetagne asked.

He made his comment in an interview Wednesday, prior to participating in a panel discussion today at a regional pensions and benefits conference being held by the Canadian Benefits & Pensions Institute, at the Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza.

Another possible solution to retirement problems would be improving the company pension plans that are available to some but not all Canadian workers.

But Schetagne said there are problems with company pension plans, including that about two thirds of Canadian workers aren't covered by a company plan.

Schetagne said an increasing trend has been for many pension plans to be "defined contribution" - plans where both the employer and employees contribute a set amount to the plan on a regular basis.

But Schetagne said there is a problem with defined contribution plans because the amount of money received is not guaranteed, with the amount varying depending on the return received on the invested money.

The retirement nest eggs of many Canadians were sharply reduced about two years ago when the recession hit and stock markets tumbled. While the markets have substantially recovered, Schetagne said the risk will always exist that drops in the stock markets and other financial markets could wreck the retirements of many Canadians involved in defined contribution plans.

The other main type of pension plan is the defined benefits plan, which gives workers a guaranteed amount of monthly pension, usually based on how many years they worked and how much money they made while they were working.

But many defined benefit plans have been facing problems in having enough money, long-term, to pay all the pensions that have been promised.

Schetagne said many employers are becoming increasingly reluctant to offer defined benefit plans because of liability issues they could face in providing the promised pensions if the pension plan doesn't have enough money.

There is also a potential problem for workers, to the extent that a guaranteed pension might not be so guaranteed if the pension plan goes broke.

The best solution for resolving those issues would be to expand the Canada Pension Plan, Schetagne said.

While the existing Canada Pension Plan pays a pension of up to 25 per cent of a worker's earnings when they are working, a doubling of the benefit could increase the benefit to 50 per cent.

That increase could be accomplished by increasing both employer and employee contributions to the Canada Pension Plan from 4.95 per cent each to 7.95 per cent each, Schetagne said.

Those increase premiums could be phased in over several years, to help ease the burden for workers and employees, he said.

Why do you vote?

2011-04-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

UN Platform for Action Committe, MB., is holding a session in rural Manitoba, in spite of the flood waters lapping close by - To encourage women to get out and VOTE -

UNPAC Changemakers session in Altona, Manitoba where we're being asked to answer the following questions.

-Why do I vote?

-Why do I think voting is important for all of us?

-Do I have 'criteria' when I vote? (i.e. certain things that need to be met)

-Do I have a favourite person and/or party that I always go with?

-What federal policies impact us here in this community?

Bring attention to early childhood care and education

2011-04-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

"Code Blue Challenge - Do something imaginative in the last week of the federal election campaign to bring attention to early childhood care and education.

Take a field trip to your local campaign office to deliver the Code Blue "Report Card" on the federal parties' platforms
Pass out the Code Blue "Report Card" to parents wherever they gather - schools, playgrounds, coffee shops, swim classes, libraries
Organize a small group to leaflet in a local mall or on a street corner to deliver the "Report Card".
Add some fun with a Hokey Pokey Flash Mob, make up new lyrics to old favourites (Skinnamarink - "We need child care in the morning and in the afternoon")
Share your action on YouTube!
Upload a message to voters and politicians to YouTube, spread the word on twitter and Facebook
Get the "Report Card" out in any way you can think of and report back to Code Blue on what you did!!

TAKE THE CODE BLUE CHALLENGE - THEN LET CANADA KNOW WHAT YOU DID FOR QUALITY CHILD CARE

Take a Girl to Vote!

2011-04-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

Equal Voice Launches Take a Girl to Vote:
Calls on Canadians to Promote Political Engagement of Girls and Young Women

TORONTO – Equal Voice and partner organizations, Apathy is Boring, the Canadian Women’s Foundation, the Girls Action Foundation, the Girl Guides of Canada, The Historica-Dominion Institute and the YWCA Canada are asking voters to pledge to bring a girl to the polls on May 2nd.

Canadian women and men of all ages are encouraged to take a girl of pre-voting age to the ballot box on Election Day, May 2nd - whether it is their daughter, niece, neighbour, sibling or mentee.

“By committing to take a girl to the polls on Election Day, women and men are engaging young Canadians in the most fundamental democratic and political process that shapes our country”.

“We are appealing to all Canadians to join our cause of changing the face of politics, and this begins with engaging young women,” said Donna Dasko, National Chair, Equal Voice.

In advance of Election Day, these groups are raising awareness regarding the importance of politically motivating and educating young women and girls so that they become involved at every level of politics.

“Girls learn empowerment and leadership by example,” added Paulette Senior, CEO of YWCA Canada, the country’s oldest and largest multi-service women’s organization. “The positive impact of Take a Girl to Vote is virtually limitless. Teaching girls to value voting is an important step toward ensuring that as adults, they feel fully entitled to participate in all levels of the electoral process, from casting a ballot to becoming prime minister.”

“Low voter turnout, particularly among youth, continues to be significant issue in Canada”, noted Ilona Dougherty, Executive Director, Apathy is Boring, whose goal is to increase youth voting rates, increase youth engagement in communities, and build a sustainable dialogue between young people and their elected officials.

“By being introduced to the democratic process at an early age, young Canadians will be more inclined to participate in the future”.

The Dominion Institute (The Historica-Dominion Institute) 2008 Youth Election Survey found that youth who discussed politics at home were three times more likely to vote. Further, youth who perceived voting as a responsibility (instead of a choice) were twice as likely to vote.

“The Take a Girl to Vote initiative speaks to the importance of early civic education as seen in our Youth Election Study, and offers a very meaningful opportunity to help improve youth voter turnout in the long run”, underscored Jeremy Diamond, Director, Development and Programs at The Historica-Dominion Institute.

With their membership of more than 100,000 girls and women, Girl Guides of Canada-Guides du Canada (GGC) fosters the principles of female leadership building.

Deborah Del Duca, CEO added that, “Promoting the election of more women to government in Canada not only provides a strong voice for women, but also helps to create strong role models for younger generations.

The work of Equal Voice and the other organizations involved in this campaign exemplify core values of GGC – challenging and empowering Canadian girls in order to help them understand their responsibilities as citizens of Canada and the larger world.”

The Montreal based Girls Action Foundation added their voice to Equal Voice’s call to Take a Girl to Vote.

“We work with young women who are passionate, who have ideas and who are committed to making a difference,” explained Tatiana Fraser, Executive Director. “It is crucial that they understand the power of voting and the political process generally.”

Beverley Wybrow, the Executive Director of the Canadian Women’s Foundation added that “CWF invests in girls’ empowerment programs because we know that it often translates into increased civic engagement. It is crucial that young women become acquainted with the formal political process at a young age.”

Equal Voice is a national, multi-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to the election of more women to all levels of government. More information can be found at www.equalvoice.ca

For media inquiries on Take our Girls to Vote, please contact:

Nancy Peckford, Executive Director , Equal Voice– 613-292-7941

Amy Kishek, Youth Outreach Coordinator, Equal Voice – 613-608-7040

Sign the Petition - Violence Against Women & the Long Gun Registry

2011-04-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Endorse the Open Letter to Party Leaders on the Long Gun Registry!

YWCA Canada has posted our Open Letter to Party Leaders on Violence Against Women and the Long Gun Registry as an online petition.

We need people to sign on as fast as possible at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/supportguncontrol/.

It’s quick and easy, please sign on and share!

Action Canada for Population and Development and Canadian Federation for Sexual Health to Announce Results

2011-04-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

ACPD has received answers to our election questionnaire that was submitted to the five main political parties in Canada. The only party we have not heard back from is the Conservative Party of Canada. We have sent them a reminder and will submit all responses to the media on Tuesday, April 26^th.

Bloc Québécois’ response - http://www.acpd.ca/node/237

Green Party’s response – http://www.acpd.ca/node/240

Liberal Party’s response - http://www.acpd.ca/node/241

New Democratic Party’s response - http://www.acpd.ca/node/242

Disabled Canadians ask who will fight for them

2011-04-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

Disabled Canadians ask who will fight for them

Edmonton Journal

Wed Apr 20 2011

Page: A5

Section: News

Byline: Greg Markey

As the federal parties get close to the home stretch of the election campaign, party leaders are courting several different markets for votes: families, seniors, small business owners. Although usually under the jurisdiction of the provinces, some disabled voters are worried their concerns are not being addressed by the federal leaders, said one person who contacted Postmedia News via openfile.ca to ask where the parties stand.

"Another election, another disappointment . The party platforms have no mention or promises about assistance or funding for people with disabilities who rely on education, or medical professionals . What are the federal parties offering to citizens with disabilities?" wrote Dan Pagan from Calgary.

Conservatives
As part of the Conservative's economic action plan, some projects have been undertaken to assist the physically disabled. Stimulus funds allowed for 300 projects that made government buildings more accessible to those with disabilities. The Conservatives also introduced a Registered Disabilities Savings Plan in 2008.

It also increased the Child Disability Benefit, and increased the amount of medical expenses that can be refunded. Existing tax credits were made available to those already eligible for the Disability Tax Credit.

Liberals
The Liberal party has pledged to work with the disabled, the organizations they work with, as well as the provinces, to examine ways to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD).

The Liberals also want to protect disability benefits from being lost to bankruptcy of the companies that manage these pension funds. A Liberal government would provide $700 million more annually, for Guaranteed Income Supplements for seniors, and would benefit those seniors with disabilities. The Affordable Housing Framework would provide $550 million to build more affordable housing for vulnerable groups, one being the disabled.

NDP
The NDP proposes increasing the Canada Student Grants program by $200 million a year, to give disabled students more access to a post-secondary education.

Other aspects of the NDP plan mirror the policies of the Liberals.

Child Care Report Card

2011-04-20T13:58:00.001-07:00

Child Care report card: Harper’s score ‘unsatisfactory’

OTTAWA – A report card grading the Canada-wide parties’ child care election promises says Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are unwilling to learn and should develop active listening skills around parents’ needs for reliable, high quality child care.

The report card, produced by the Code Blue for Child Care campaign, takes Harper to task for the lack of any plan to create and fund a range of good early childhood education and care services and improved parental leave.

“If child care was a course and the Conservatives were in the classroom, they would stand out for their lack of interest and unwillingness to contribute ideas,” says Shellie Bird. “While we found there was room for improvement with the other Canada-wide parties, they at least did their homework, and got some good scores and made commitments to universal child care.”

The report card can be accessed in full at www.buildchildcare.ca.

Aboriginal Candidates

2011-04-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

An Aboriginal Who’s Who of Canada’s 2011 Federal Election

By Tim Fontaine, on April 7, 2011

It’s federal election time in Canada and across the country campaigns are in full swing. Whether you choose to vote or not, here’s a quick look at Aboriginal involvement in the 41st federal election, and information about some interesting ridings to watch.

ABORIGINAL CANDIDATES

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC):

Leona Aglukkaq (Inuit) – Nunavut
Rod Bruinooge (Metis) – Winnipeg South
Rob Clarke (Cree) – Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River
Shelly Glover (Metis) – Saint Boniface
Peter Penashue (Innu) – Labrador

Green Party of Canada (GPC)

George Barrett (Metis) – Labrador
Johnny Kasudluak (Inuit) – Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou
Eliza Knockwood (Mi’kmaq) – Charlottetown
George Morin (Cree) - Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River
Lorraine Rekmans (Algonquin) - Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing
Jacqueline Romanow (Metis) – Winnipeg Centre
Alberteen Spence (Innu) – Churchill

Liberal Party of Canada (LPC):

Sydney Garrioch (Cree) - Churchill
Joe Handley (Metis) – Western Arctic
Gabe LaFond (Metis) - Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River
Paul Okalik (Inuit) - Nunavut
Todd Russell (Metis) – Labrador
Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux (Ojibway) – York Simcoe
Karen Young (Dene) – Fort McMurray-Athabasca

New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP):

Lewis Cardinal (Cree) – Edmonton Centre
Jeff Horvath (Ojibway) – Wild Rose
Lawrence Joseph (Cree) - Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River
Edith Loring-Kuhanga (Gitxsan) – Saanich-Gulf Islands
Romeo Saganash (Cree) – Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou
Jennifer Villebrun (Metis) – Peace River

PLATFORMS

Some highlights from the Liberal platform (by far the most comprehensive). If elected, the Party says they will:

Lift the much maligned 2% cap on FN post-secondary education funding (which they imposed in 1996)
Invest (by their second year) an additional $300 million in First Nation K-12 education
Re-fund the embattled First Nations University of Canada (FNUC)
$5 million/year for a Canada Metis Scholarship
Create a national task force examining missing and murdered Aboriginal women

Read the full platform.

Aboriginal people are mentioned twice in the Green platform. If elected, the Party says they will:

Increase funding to $800 million/year for First Nations education, safe drinking water and improved housing
Ensure Canada moves forward in implementing the spirit of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Read the full platform.

Both the NDP and CPC platforms are being either gradually released, or not released until later. We’ll show you highlights from those as they are made available.

RIDINGS TO WATCH

Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River is the only riding with all Aboriginal candidates; George Morin (GPC), Lawrence Joseph (NDP), Gabe LaFond (LPC) and the incumbent Rob Clarke (CPC).

Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou has two Aboriginal candidates; Romeo Saganash (NDP) and Johnny Kasudluak (GPC)

Labrador has three Aboriginal candidates; Peter Penashue (CPC), George Barrett (GPC) and the incumbent Todd Russell (LPC).

In the Churchill riding, two Aboriginal candidates – Sydney Garrioch (LPC), Alberteen Spence (GPC) – are attempting to unseat NDP’s Niki Ashton (non-Aboriginal).

Nunavut has two Inuit candidates; incumbent Leona Aglukkaq (CPC) and former premier (the first) Paul Okalik (LPC).

Vancouver Island North – Home riding of the latest Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs John Duncan (mentioned in Rick’s post).

Letter from Business and Professional Women (a Federate Member of National Council of Women of Canada)

2011-04-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

April 18, 2011

Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Email : pm@pm.gc.ca

Dear Mr. Harper:

The Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPW Canada) was founded in 1930. Our mission is to develop the professional and leadership potential of women in Canada through education, awareness, advocacy and mentoring within a supportive network.

We are part of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, which has clubs in more than 100 countries around the world. Our International Federation has Category I Consultative Status at the United Nations.

We have approximately 40 clubs across Canada, and we are actively encouraging our members to examine the issues in this election, to compare what each party is offering that will improve the lives of women in Canada. We are urging all women to get out to vote. To that end, we have identified some of our key issues, and would appreciate hearing back from you in terms of your party’s position. We realize that time is short, so we respectively request that you return this completed questionnaire by Friday, April 29^th, so that we have time to relay the information to our members. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Thank you for your cooperation, and good luck in the coming election.

Sincerely,

Doris E. Hall, President

Canadian Federation of Business & Professional Women (BPW Canada)

Tel: 519-858-5125

Doris.hall@curocom.ca

www.bpwcanada.com/about.html

Questionnaire to the Political Leaders for the Government of Canada

In Election 2010

1) In 2006, major changes were made to Status of Women Canada, which now no longer funds groups that do research or advocacy. Do you agree that Status of Women Canada should fund equality-seeking groups that do advocacy and lobbying, and if so, would you change this policy if elected?

2) BPW Canada believes that the country needs a national early learning and childcare program that meets the QUAD principles (quality, universality, accessibility, developmental). It is very difficult for women to join and stay in the workforce without one. What is your party’s position on this, and what would you do, if elected?

3) Women are still woefully under-represented in politics, with only 69 women (22.4% of MPs) elected in the last federal election. What will you do to ensure that women are better represented, if election? What will you do to change the culture of politics to ensure more decorum in the House of Commons and Senate?

4) There is a lot of research that documents inequities in the Employment Insurance program between women and men. Women, for example, are much less likely to be able to qualify for EI benefits because they tend to move in and out of the labour market because of child-care/elder-care responsibilities. Will you commit to reform of the EI legislation to address these inequities? What would your party do, if elected?

5) Poverty is very much a women’s issue in Canada:

• 51.6% of lone parent families headed by women are poor;

• Almost half (41.5%) of single, widowed or divorced (“unattached”) women over 65 are poor;

• 35% of women on their own under 65 live in poverty;

• Many women with disabilities, Aboriginal women, visible minority and immigrant women also live in poverty. www.fafia-afai.org/en/story/women-and-poverty-criaw-fact-sheet

If elected, will your party develop a national poverty reduction strategy? If so, what would be the key elements that you think would be important to include?

Senator Tommy Banks letter re Harper’s gradual destruction of our Canada

2011-04-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

Tommy Banks is a Senantor, from Alberta. He is a Canadian Concuctor, and Pianist, and hosted The Tommy Banks Show for 15 years. A friend sent me this message, and it sure spoke to me about some important issues to consider in this election.

What Canadians have lost under this “Harper” Govt.
Tommy Banks,

Canadian conductor and pianist,
host of the CBC television’s “The Tommy Banks Show” for 15 years.

Subject: Tom Banks

A letter from my partner Tom Banks
by Sharman King on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:39am

I apologize for this long re-post, but I’d like to share with my friends this letter from my business partner and musical associate Senator Tommy Banks. It’s worth noting that Tom was a Conservative when he was appointed to the Senate. If you agree with this food for thought please feel free to send it to your friends of whatever political stripe. The bigger message here is how we want our government to behave, no matter who forms that government. Here’s Tom’s missive:

There is only one thing about the outcome of the May 2nd election on which Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper agree. It is that one of them will be the Prime Minister of Canada. Mr. Layton, Mr. Duceppe and Ms. May are not in the running to form a government. They can’t. It will be either Mr. Ignatieff or Mr. Harper.

That is the choice, and it is a very clear – in fact, stark choice. We will choose between openness or secrecy. Between listening or refusing to listen. Between someone who respects Parliament or someone who disdains it. Between things we can and will do now or things that, (provided of course that everything goes well), we might do in five or six years. Between someone who answers all questions from Canadians, or someone who won’t accept any.

Between Mr. Harper who said “It’s past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act”, or Mr. Ignatieff who said “ . . . we don’t want user fees. We want universal, accessible, free-at-the-point-of-service health care, paid out of general revenue. That’s just bottom line. Otherwise we get two-tiered”.

Between buying jets or helping vets. Between real early childhood learning and care or Saturday-night babysitting. Between respect for our great institutions or contempt for them. Between helping families or helping big corporations. Between the Canada that we think we have, or the way in which Mr. Harper has already changed it.

Over the past few years Mr. Harper’s government has quietly engineered so many changes that there are some ways in which our country is barely recognizable. Many of us don’t yet realize the extent of those changes, because many of them have been brought about very carefully and gradually – almost imperceptibly in some cases.

This is diabolically clever. If these things had all been done at once, there would have been loud protests and reactions. But moving just one little brick at a time doesn’t cause much fuss – until you realize that the whole house has been renovated. And we’ve hardly noticed.

These are changes that are at the very heart of who and what Canadians are. They are changes to the protections that used to exist against the tyranny of the majority – or against a single-minded my-way-or-the-highway autocrat. These changes are losses to our very Canadian-ness. Let me remind you of some of them:

The Law Commission of Canada was created by an Act of Parliament in 1997. It worked very well. It kept an eye in a sort-of avuncular way, on necessary reforms of the law, including election law. The Commission couldn’t actually change law; but it was very good at letting governments and everybody else know when changes needed to be made and why. It was our legal Jiminy Cricket, and it performed a valuable service for Canada. The Commission was created by an Act of Parliament, and any government wanting to shut it down should have been up-front about it. It should have come to Parliament with a Bill to rescind The Law Commission of Canada Act. That’s what any of our 21 previous Prime Ministers would have done.

But to Mr. Harper, Parliament is an inconvenience. Somebody might ask “Why are you doing this?” But he didn’t want to go through all that Parliamentary trouble; so, rather than proposing the abolition of the Commission (a proposal about which there would have been pretty fierce debate on all sides), they just eliminated all funding for it in the federal budget. Governments can do that. Poof – no Law Commission.

Nice and quiet. Just one little brick. Hardly noticed.

Then there was the Court Challenges Programme, set up in 1994, which was the means by which a bit of legal help could be provided to a private individual or small organization who didn’t have a lot of money, and who was taking on, or being taken on by, the Government of Canada. It leveled the legal playing field a bit. It was a perfect example of fundamental Canadian fairness.

By convincing a tough panel of judges of the reasonableness of your cause, you could get a little help in paying for some lawyers to go up against the phalanx of legal beagles that could always, and forever, and at public expense, be brought to bear against you by the State. In other words, if you weren’t rich, and if you were taking on or being taken on by the Feds, you might have had a chance. But Mr. Harper doesn’t like being questioned, let alone challenged. It’s so inconvenient! Solution? Quietly announce that the Court Challenges Programme is being, er, discontinued. Poof – no Court Challenges Programme – no court challenges.

Hardly noticed.

The Coordination of Access to Information Request System (CAIRS) was created (by a Progressive-Conservative government) in 1989 so that departments of government could harmonize their responses to access-to-information requests that might need multi-departmental responses. It was efficient; it made sure that in most cases the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, or at least what they were saying; and it helped keep government open and accountable. Well, if you’re running a closed-door government, that’s not a good idea, is it? So, as a Treasury Board official explained to the Canadian Press, CAIRS was killed by the Harper government because “extensive” consultations showed it wasn’t valued by government departments. I guess that means that the extensive consultations were all with government departments.

Wait! Wasn’t there anybody else with whom to extensively consult? Wasn’t there some other purpose and use for CAIRS? Didn’t it have something to do with openness and accountability? I guess not. Robert Makichuk, speaking for Mr. Harper’s government, explained that “valuable resources currently being used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis of improved statistical reporting”.

Right. In other words, CAIRS was an inconvenience to the government. So poof – it’s disappeared. And, except for investigative reporters and other people who might (horrors!) ask questions, its loss is hardly noticed.

And the bridge too far for me: Cutting the already-utterly-inadequate funding for the exposure of Canadian art and artists in other countries. That funding was, by any comparison, already laughably miniscule. Mr. Harper says that “ordinary” Canadians don’t support the arts. He’s wrong. And his is now the only government of any significant country in the world that clearly just doesn’t get it.

All these changes were done quietly, cleverly, and under the radar. No fuss. No outcry. Just one little brick at a time. But in these and other ways, our Canadian house is no longer the kind of place it once was. Nobody minds good renovations. Nobody even minds tearing something down, as long as we put up something better in its place. That’s not what has happened.

Mr. Harper fired the head of the Canadian Wheat Board because he was doing his job properly. He removed the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission because she wanted to make sure that the Chalk River nuclear reactor was safe.

Hardly noticed.

There are many more things that were hardly noticed: Cuts to funding for the Status of Women, Adult Learning and Literacy, Environmental Programs, museums funding, and more. All quietly, just one brick at a time.

Hardly noticed.

As to campaign promises,

everybody in sight on every side is guilty of breaking those. Except the Federal NDP of course, who haven’t yet had the opportunity. (It’s very easy to make promises that you know you will not likely have to keep).

But the government promised to end wait times in health care. They didn’t. They promised to end, once and for all, the whining of some provinces about the non-existent “fiscal imbalance”. They didn’t. They said they had brought final resolution to the softwood lumber problem with the U.S. They haven’t. They promised to create thousands of new child-care spaces in Canada. They haven’t. They promised not to tax income trusts (“We will NEVER do that!” they said). They taxed them. They promised to lower your income tax.

They raised it.

They said they had a good “made-in-Canada” plan to meet our obligations on climate change. They don’t. Mr. Harper has said plainly that whatever the Americans do is what we’ll do too.

They campaign on a platform of transparency and accountability; but they’re now trying to discredit the Parliamentary Budget Officer that they created, because he’s trying to do the job that they gave him. Mr. Harper said that our form of government, evolved over centuries from the 900-year-old British Westminster tradition, was all wrong. We had to have fixed election dates, because otherwise, democratic principles would be trampled. “Fixed election dates”, he said, “stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties”.

So Parliament (remember them?) at Mr. Harper’s insistence, passed a law requiring fixed election dates, which Mr. Harper promptly broke.

Somebody once said that we get the kind of government we deserve. What did we do to deserve Mr. Harper? He once said that we should all “Stand Up for Canada”. Well, let’s do that. We just have to decide whether the present version of Canada is the one that we’ll stand up for. Or stand for.

Thank you

Tommy Banks (an Alberta Senator.)

And thank you Tommy Banks!

Libraries and Archives at Risk

2011-04-15T07:34:00.000-07:00

By Penni Stewart

We have learned a lot about minority government over the past few years. Conventional wisdom characterizes minority governments as consensus seekers, prevented by Parliament from doing anything too outrageous, and therefore governing in a way where the majority’s preferences rightly take priority over the minority’s preferences. But any federal government, majority or minority, is the federal government and has near dictatorial control of the huge apparatus of our national government. Stephen Harper’s tremendous innovation was to break the relationship between Parliament and governing and to apply his genius to the task of transforming Canadian government and society.

From its minority perch, the Harper government has worked at producing a cultural transformation. Funding cuts have decimated the social landscape. Gone is support for well-established programs like the court challenges program, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and Kairos. But other victims of defunding include small neighborhood organizations that work with immigrants, refugees and working class people. One is the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, near where I live, that provides a variety of health and community services in a poor area of Toronto. These government “initiatives” explicitly target equity and organizations serving marginalized communities.

Last summer’s decision to cut the mandatory long form census, however, was qualitatively different. In a vivid demonstration of anti-intellectualism, secretiveness and opportunism, Harper defied his own ministers as well as a once-in-a-lifetime coalition of academics, students, health professionals, corporate elites, business and religious leaders. Like nothing before, this decision pointed to the government’s intent to fundamentally restructure Canadian democracy towards increased individual and less community responsibility, a reliance on markets, and deeply conservative values. What was wrong with the long census form was that it measured the social inequality that is the natural outcome of policies based on neo-conservative faith.

This brings me to my “case study” of the rewriting of government organizations in the corporate image: the modernization project at Libraries and Archives Canada. Formed through the merger of the National Library and National Archives in 2004, the new body is the key Canadian institution responsible for the acquisition and management of our cultural history. It is entrusted with ensuring that present and future historians, genealogists, researchers and ordinary citizens have access to a complete and transparent documentary record of their society. Such a record not only sustains our collective memory, but is a means of holding government accountable to its citizens.

Acquiring and maintaining public records has traditionally been recognized as the work of professional librarians and archivists. Archivists, says Susan Crean, writing in the Literary Review of Canada, are “the real treasures” of archival research. Unfortunately, archivists and librarians are now absent from the leadership of Libraries and Archives Canada. In 2009, Daniel Caron, an economist, was appointed the Librarian and Archivist of Canada and there are currently no archivists or professional librarians on his senior management team.

The modernization project began last spring with a mandate to review how collections are acquired and preserved. One emerging priority is digitization, in preference to support for on-site consultation of paper records. The complexities of the digital age, with its burgeoning information, are said by Libraries and Archives Canada to make: “comprehensive acquisition and preservation unattainable goals,” necessitating “informed preservation decisions.” This worries historians and other archive users who are concerned this new approach will lead to a truncated cultural archive because of misguided selection or purging criteria, especially in the absence of professional expertise.

These concerns are well placed. In a recent speech, Mr. Caron talked of the need for a new record-keeping regime to identify government documents with “business value,” and the “systematic elimination of all other information.” The Canadian Historical Association counters that a holistic approach to records is needed because often the value of a document only becomes apparent long after its production. Digitization itself will never be complete, according to the association. In a recent comment, CHA notes that “A good website will remain not a portal to the whole collection, but largely a useful tool for planning a research trip in order to actually open books or boxes in the reading room.”

Decentralizing where documents are held, and partnering with external organizations is also proposed for Library and Archives Canada. Decentralization will make carrying out research much more difficult, and as the number of collection sites multiplies, so do concerns about maintaining standards. In keeping with the Harper government’s commitment to privatization, some of the partnerships will be with private businesses, threatening public access to our heritage.

The new business model has led to strained relations between Library and Archives Canada and its users. Most researchers using the national institution travel long distances to consult material in collections, requiring extended hours of service. In 2007, an abrupt change in services for retrieving and consulting material sparked public outrage. The conflict was resolved with the creation of a “services advisory board” that included representatives of user groups across Canada — at least until 2009, when Library and Archives Canada simply stopped calling meetings and let the board membership atrophy. This has excluded key communities from public consultation on the modernization efforts.

The restructuring plan for Library and Archives Canada threatens our cultural heritage. CAUT is embarking on a multifaceted campaign to underscore the importance of restoring librarians and archivists to the leadership of Library and Archives Canada; ensuring that acquisitions are directed to preserving the comprehensive historical record; creating standards and conditions for digitization under the oversight of professionals; holding public consultation; and ending the privatization of records.

Young Women Demand a Voice

2011-04-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

Young Women Demand an Equal Voice in the Federal Election 2011

This week, Equal Voice launched the iCommit Campaign, a peer driven initiative which asks young women ranging in age from 18 to 25 to commit to vote in this federal election – and beyond.

"Equal Voice aims to ignite in young women a life-long commitment to politics, a commitment which begins by casting a ballot on May 2nd, 2011," said Nancy Peckford, Executive Director for Equal Voice

Using the catch phrase iCommit to Vote/Run/Lead, EV is encouraging young women to not only commit to voting themselves on May 2, but to also lead their friends and peers to the polls to do the same.

Further, young women are being invited to champion the cause of electing more women and, ultimately, to consider running for office or running a campaign themselves at the university, community or provincial/territorial/federal level.

"We recognize that young women’s views are often not sought, represented or heard in the political process", added Michal Harewood, Equal Voice National Youth Chair.

In the last Parliament, there were five women under the age of forty in the House of Commons (1.6%), compared with twenty-five men under 40 (8%). Women MP’s overall comprised just over 22%.

"Though many young women today are savvy, educated and highly motivated to make a difference, there is often a disconnect between them and federal politics," noted Amy Kishek, Youth Outreach Coordinator.

The iCommit Campaign aims to reverse this trend by encouraging young women to think of themselves as change agents within the political process itself."

Equal Voice and its partners at the YWCA Canada, Apathy is Boring, the Girls Action Foundation, and the Canadian Women’s Foundation are inviting young women to share their views and experiences online through iCommit statements, YouTube videos, and other social media tools.

In particular, young women will elaborate on why voting, running and being a leader matters to them and how Canada’s democracy would change if more women were involved.

In preparation for this campaign, EV has been organizing a series of campaign schools and speakers’ bureaus designed to familiarize young women with the how-to’s of mounting a student council campaign on the issues they care about.

To participate in the campaign, go to www.icommit.org^{For more information:
Nancy Peckford: npeckford@equalvoice.ca or 613 292 7941
Amy Kishek: akishek@equalvoice.ca or 613 608 7040}

Support for Midwifery

2011-04-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Canadian Association of Midwives Calls on All Federal Political Parties to Include Midwifery in Their Health Care Platforms

Marketwire

Wed Apr 13 2011, 9:19am ET

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - April 13, 2011) - The Canadian Association of Midwives (CAM) is calling on all political parties to fully support the regulation and expansion of sustainable, publicly funded midwifery services in all provinces and territories.

"As the national organization representing midwives and the profession of midwifery in Canada", said Ms. Anne Wilson, CAM President, "our mission is to provide leadership and advocacy for midwifery as a regulated, publicly funded and vital part of the primary maternity care system in all provinces and territories."

Most parties are currently proposing additional funding for physicians, nurses, and nurse practitioners to practice in underserved, rural and remote communities. Midwives, Canada's fastest growing group of maternity care providers, have been left off this list. This is a disappointment to Canada's midwives and midwifery consumers, given that the profession of midwifery has been regulated and funded in Canada for over 17 years. CAM strongly believes that midwives and midwifery care must be included in all federal initiatives aiming to provide new or improve existing primary maternity care services in Canadian communities, whether urban, rural or remote.

"Aboriginal communities, in particular, have been working tirelessly to bring maternity care services and midwifery back to our communities" said Carol Couchie, President of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives (NACM) and member of CAM. "We need a commitment from the federal government to implement regulatory, educational and policy changes to bring birth back to our (Aboriginal) communities."

Midwifery care must be included as part of all parties' health care platforms. Midwifery care for healthy, childbearing women has the potential to reduce costs to healthcare systems, improve outcomes for mothers and babies, and improve satisfaction for women and families. Increasing midwifery services across Canada is a cost-effective and family-centered way to improve access to maternity care.

CAM urges the federal government to set up an Office of Midwifery Policy to provide a national perspective on midwifery care and contribute to the development of policies which nurture the expansion of publicly funded midwifery services. The government must ensure that all Canadian women have access to safe maternity care in community birth centers, in hospital settings or at home.

CAM looks forward to working with the federal government to ensure that midwifery care is accessible to all Canadian women and families in all regions of the country and that midwifery is included in the national health policy agenda.

Important questions asked of the political parties

2011-04-14T12:52:00.000-07:00

The following questions have been sent to the five main Candian political parties - and their responses will be relased on the web site of ACPD, and Canadian Federation for Sexual Health, and here on this Blog!

Election 2011: A questionnaire for the five main Canadian political parties

The Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

In September 2010, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, launched the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health at the end of a global summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The global strategy specifically calls for “a comprehensive, integrated package of essential interventions and services […] including family-planning […and] safe abortion services” when addressing women’s and children’s health. Access to family planning will improve the empowerment of women and girls and will reduce maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS transmission, infant mortality and adolescent pregnancy. Satisfying the unmet need for contraception in developing countries would prevent 52 million unintended pregnancies annually, which, in turn, would avert more than 1.5 million maternal and child deaths.

Furthermore, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) expert opinion obtained by ACPD in the 2010 G8 lead-up: “the use of effective contraception reduces but does not eliminate unwanted pregnancy and the demand for induced abortion. Women suffering contraceptive failure require access to safe abortion services, if they cannot access safe services, they are likely to seek unsafe services.”

The government’s position excluding the funding of safe abortion services from the Muskoka Initiative is at odds with what both the Secretary-General and the WHO suggest is needed. Access to safe abortion, when and where legal, is a critical piece of women’s healthcare.

Q. What will your party do to ensure that funds committed under the Muskoka Initiative are used for a full range of sexual and reproductive health services and supplies, including those related to family planning and access to safe abortion services where legal?

Official Development Assistance (ODA)_____

In March 2010 Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that there will be a freeze of up to four years on the International Assistance Envelope at $5 billion. The next federal budget provides an excellent opportunity to announce a long term plan for the future growth of Canadian aid to achieve the UN target of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) by 2015.

With an expected freeze on Canadian aid, it is expected that ODA for 2011/12 will be approximately $5.4 billion or 0.32% of Canadian GNI, down from 0.33% in 2010/11. By 2014 the performance ratio is expected to be 0.28%, among the lowest of 22 official donors.

Q. What steps will your party take to ensure that Canada meets its commitments to deliver ODA at a level of 0.7% of its GNI by 2015, a goal endorsed in June 2005 by all four political parties in the Canadian Parliament?

Aboriginal Women and their Sexual and Reproductive Health__

In comparison to the Canadian population, Aboriginal people face both lower quality of health and lower quality of health care. Aboriginal women, in particular, are at an even greater disadvantage. The consequences of receiving a lower standard of health care are many and the situation is becoming more and more complex with each new generation. A review of the social determinants that influence the provision of health services to Aboriginal women, as well as the creation of culturally sensitive programs focused on Aboriginal sexual and reproductive health, are necessary in order to restore balance and build healthy communities.

Q. Is your party prepared to consult with Aboriginal women, elders, traditional healers, midwives and youth regardless of residency, in order to develop and implement a plan that would ensure that sexual and reproductive health programs, services and research are available for all aboriginal persons?

Domestic Implementation of Canada’s International Human Rights Obligations

Since at least 2001, United Nations human rights bodies, Parliamentary Committees and many organizations in Canada have repeatedly criticized the Canadian government for its failures in adequate domestic implementation of Canada’s international human rights obligations and commitments. At the core of this problem is the lack of effective, transparent and inclusive mechanisms and processes in Canada for implementing and following up the recommendations of UN human rights bodies and for reporting to these bodies; this lack has been regularly criticized. During a 2009 UN review of Canada’s human rights record, Canada accepted a number of recommendations to develop a more “effective, transparent and accountable” mechanism for implementation of international human rights obligations but has yet done very little to act upon this.

Q. What would your party do to fulfill this commitment that Canada has made to reform the currently inadequate and flawed domestic procedures relating to follow-up and implementation of its international human rights obligations?

Rights of Sex Workers in Canada__

While the actual exchange of sexual services for money between consenting adults in Canada is legal, a number of provisions of the Criminal Code make illegal many activities related to sex work and make sex workers more vulnerable to violence and potential exposure to HIV. Three specific provisions make it illegal to keep a “bawdy house” (s. 210), to live on the avails of prostitution (s. 212(1)(j)), and to communicate in public for the purposes of prostitution (s. 213(1)(c)). In a September 2010 decision (Bedford v. Attorney General of Canada), Ontario Superior Court Justice Himel ruled these three provisions unconstitutional as they violate the rights of sex workers as guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms contributing to their increased risk of being subjected to violence and making it less likely for sex workers to report experiences of violence to the police. In striking down these three provisions, Justice Himel wrote: “I have found that the law as it stands is currently contributing to danger faced by prostitutes” (at para. 536). Sex workers’ organizations and others have long criticized these laws as adding to the discrimination and stigma sex workers face leading to increased risk of their experiencing violence and other threats to their health and safety. The Ontario Superior Court judgment is currently under appeal.

Q. Would your party support dropping the government's appeal of the Ontario Superior Court decision and, in line with Justice Himel’s findings, move to fully repeal the unconstitutional criminal provisions found to violate the rights of sex workers?

What further steps would your party take to end violence against sex workers and to ensure that sex workers can access police protection and health services without discrimination or stigma?

How would you ensure that the government consults meaningfully with sex workers in making legislative or policy decisions that specifically affect their rights?

Accessibility: Abortion in Canada_

Abortion has been without criminal restrictions under Canadian law since 1988, yet only 15% of

Canadian hospitals provide abortion services. According to section 3 of the Canada Health Act the primary objective of Canadian health care policy is to “protect, promote and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and to facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers.” It is currently impossible for women to obtain an abortion in Prince Edward Island, and the provincial governments of New Brunswick and PEI refuse to fund abortions provided in private clinics. This directly contravenes the accessibility provisions of the Canada Health Act. Despite financial penalties and warnings from previous governments, nothing has been done by the government to enforce the Canada Health Act.

Q. What will your party do to ensure that all Canadian women have access to abortion services without financial or other barriers, in conformance with the Canada Health Act?

Health Resources and Information__

Accessibility includes more than just access to services; it also includes life-long access to sexual and reproductive health resources and information. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to be a significant and increasing public health concern. Over the past decade, rates of Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and infectious syphilis have steadily increased. Although we often think that only youth and younger adults are at risk of acquiring an STI, it is important to remember that all Canadians, regardless of age, are at risk. In 2008, the Public Health Agency of Canada released an updated edition of the Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health to help professionals working in the area of sexual health education to develop evidence-based comprehensive education policies and programs. It is important to note that education means not only school- based programs, but includes all programs aimed at providing individuals of all ages with age-appropriate access to evidence-based sexual and reproductive health resources and information.

Q. What will your party do to ensure that all Canadians have access to age-appropriate comprehensive evidence-based sexual and reproductive health resources and information?

How will your party use the government-issued Guidelines to ensure access to sexual health education and services for all Canadians?

Collaborating Organizations__

Action Canada for Population and Development - www.acpd.ca

Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD)’s goal is to advance action by the Canadian government to meet the commitments that it made at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994, and, in particular, to meet the financial targets and policy commitments made in Cairo.

Formed in 1997, ACPD is an advocacy organization that focuses on:

sexual rights and health,
reproductive rights and health
the right to health and related human rights,
the integration of sexual health and rights, and reproductive health and rights, and HIV/AIDS.

ACPD reinforces women's human rights as a core value in its work.

Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (CFSH)

Formerly Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada - www.cfsh.ca

The Canadian Federation for Sexual Health is a national network dedicated to supporting access to comprehensive sexual health education, information and services in every community.

Thirty-four independent member organizations in more than 60 communities across Canada provide clinical services, education, and counselling to over 310,000 Canadians every year; the majority of these clients are under 30 years of age and most of them are women. CFSH works in partnership with all levels of government, academic institutions, and other non-profit, non-governmental organizations.

Upcoming event in Ottawa - all are welcome

2011-04-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

Event Takes Place Rain or Shine!
Facebook Group: Rally on Women's Rights in Canada! 2011 Federal Election

We want it now! This cannot wait ANOTHER generation!

Equal Pay For Equal Work!
Universal Childcare!
Safety & Inquiry into the 500+ Missing or Murdered Aboriginal Women!

Rendez Vous on Rideau and William St, in the Byward Market at 1pm.
Walking up Sparks St, and onto Bank until Sylvia Holden Park by Landsdowne at 3pm. RAIN OR SHINE.

A Walk through Ottawa's Downtown Core is planned to raise awareness on these issues as well as to inform politicians, policy makers, and community members that the Women of Canada stand United against the Human Rights Abuses, Economic Inequalities and Burdens faced by Canadian women for far too long.

All persons and groups are welcome to participate.
PLEASE BRING SANDWICH BOARDS AND PROTEST SIGNS!
Any ideas for slogans are welcome on the wall of our facebook page!

This is a non violent, non disruptive march to gain attention from politicians and support from our communities.

We will be meeting 1pm (rideau and william), marching towards the sylvia holden park in the glebe around 3pm.

It's time to break the silence on Women's Rights in Canada!

Female Candidates

2011-04-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

With Nominations Now Closed, Incremental Rise in Female Candidates

April 13, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ottawa: With nominations now closed, Equal Voice has confirmed that 407 women candidates, representing 31 percent of all candidates for Canada’s five major political parties, will be on the ballot for the May 2nd federal election.

This represents a slight two point increase from the 2008 federal election when 29 percent of major party candidates were women.

The New Democratic Party is the clear leader with 125 female candidates, nearly 41 percent of all its candidates, which is the highest percentage fielded by a political party in Canada’s history. The Bloc Quebecois has beat its own record by running 24 of 75 candidates, or 32 percent of its candidates, up four points from the last election.

The Liberal Party has confirmed that 92 of its 308 candidates, or 30 percent, are women, though this is a considerably lower number than in the 2008 election when the party attained a historic high of 37 percent.

The Conservative Party is fielding 22 percent women, up two points from the last election.

Finally, the Green Party has 98 women candidates (32 percent) on their slate, nearly attaining their goal of one third.

“Equal Voice is pleased to see that there has been some overall improvement in the numbers of women running. We know that the vast majority of Canadians want the opportunity to vote for more women. This election will give some of them that chance,” said Donna Dasko, Equal Voice National Chair.

In 2009, Equal Voice invited major party leaders to improve the numbers of women they would nominate in the next federal election. All major party leaders agreed to Equal Voice’s Canada Challenge, though it is clear that the smaller parties have fared better, particularly the New Democratic Party.

“They have set a new bar in Canada. Their success underscores the fact that when parties work hard to reach out to women as potential candidates, women will rise to the challenge.”

Consistent with an earlier analysis by Equal Voice, however, fewer women are running in winnable ridings. Only the Bloc Quebecois is filling more than one third (36 percent) of its winnable ridings with women candidates.

The New Democratic Party is second with 31 percent women in winnable ridings. Female candidates are on the ballot of 27 percent of the Liberal Party’s winnable ridings, while the Conservatives are running women in 20 percent of its most winnable seats.

“In order for Canada to rank significantly better than 52nd in the world in terms of women’s representation, parties need to re-visit their candidate search strategies, especially in winnable ridings,” added Nancy Peckford, Executive Director of Equal Voice.

Tomorrow, Equal Voice plans to publish a complete list of female candidates on its website by riding, with links to their campaign websites.

“While some voters may not have a woman on the ballot in their own ridings, it’s important that they know where those female candidates are and how they can potentially support one that represents their values,” added Peckford.

For more information: Nancy Peckford, Executive Director: 613-292-7941 or npeckford@equalvoice.ca

Children and the 2011 Election - Questions for the candidates.

2011-04-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Children and the 2011 Federal Election
Canadians under 18 cannot vote, but federal policies affect their lives. They represent one quarter of Canada's population. There is a lot of talk about families in this election, but not all family policies have the same impact for children. The Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children hopes you will use your voice and vote to support the rights of children in Canada. Consider the following facts and ask about the impact of proposed policies for all children in Canada.

Treat all children fairly

* After taxes, children in higher income households benefit more from the Child Tax Credit and the Universal Child Care Benefit than children in low-income households.

*70% of the funds under the children's fitness tax credit went to taxpayers earning over $50,000. Funding for community recreation programs for all children is reduced.

* In 2009 Canada's Chief Public Health Officer named the widening gap in living conditions between children in high-income households and children in low-income households as a top priority public health issue.

Question: What specific steps will you take to ensure equitable treatment for all children?
Give children living in poverty a chance

* About 600,000 children live in poverty. 38% of foodbank users are children. Foodbank use reached its highest level in 2010, indicating that the economic recovery is not benefiting all children in Canada.

* Governments that set targets to reduce child poverty make gains, compared to little progress in Canada in 20 years.

* All parties on a House of Commons committee recommended a national poverty reduction strategy; the government response to the committee report indicated that current policies are adequate.

Question: Will you give top priority to a poverty reduction strategy that sets measurable targets and specific steps to reduce child poverty in Canada?

End discrimination that leaves some children behind.

* The Auditor General documented that funding for Aboriginal child welfare is less than funding for non-Aboriginal children in similar circumstances. Instead of resolving the issue, federal government lawyers blocked a complaint by Aboriginal child-serving agencies to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on technical grounds.

* Children on some reserves have no school and lack access to clean water.

* Only 10% of Aboriginal children off-reserve have access to Aboriginal Head Start programming.

* In 2003 Canada was asked by the UN Committee on the Rights of Children to end discrimination in education, health care, and other essential services for children with disabilities, children in recent immigrant families, aboriginal children, and children in remote locations. Canada's official report in 2009 does not respond to this 2003 recommendation or a similar 2007 Senate report recommendation (See CCRC website for reports).

Question: What specific steps will you take to end discrimination that leaves some children behind in Canada?

Take effective steps to stop violence and prevent youth crime

* More young people are victims of violence than perpetrators of it. Youth crime rates are down.

* Canada still has one of the highest rates of youth in prison. Proposed changes in Bill C-4 would increase the use of detention and imprisonment for young people.

* A national roundtable on youth justice identified what works to reduce youth crime and recommended expansion of effective youth programs, rather than changing the law. Mental health services are a high priority.

Question: Will you make helping young people in trouble a priority instead of jailing them? Will you support a national strategy to prevent violence against young people?

Give all young children a good start in life

* Canada spends less than comparable countries on early childhood in general (OECD report) and less on early childhood care and education (OECD and UNICEF reports).

* Over 70% of mothers of young children are in the labour force. There are only child care spaces for 20%. High fees make quality care and preschool education unaffordable for many families.

Question: What will you do to ensure there are realistic options for the development of every young child?

Be accountable to children

* A Senate report and UN reports document big gaps in fulfillment of children's rights in Canada.

* The people we elect on May 2 will negotiate a new Social Union Agreement, which includes funding for children's services, as well as health care. The impact for children needs careful attention.

Question: Will you support making the Convention on the Rights of Children part of Canadian law and appointing a National Advocate for Children to promote and protect children's rights in Canada?

Prepared by the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children

Women and Pensions - questions to ask.

2011-04-12T05:16:00.000-07:00

Women and Election 2011

*Women and Pensions*

*What do pensions in Canada look like: *

*Unstable*

· The financial market meltdown of 2008-2009, and the economic recession that followed, exposed the weakness of our private retirement savings system.

· Private Pensions are supposed to make up a fundamental tier of our pension system, but the loss of personal investments and workplace pension plans have forced many rely on only the public pension (CPP) for retirement.

*Inadequate *

· Women make up the majority of the paid work force, yet women are disproportionately represented in the low-wage, unstable and part-time categories of employment, and are least likely to have a workplace pension plan. Disabled women may not have opportunity to work long enough to accumulate adequate public or private pension.

· Personal savings including property, stocks, tax free savings accounts and RSPs are not enough to rely on. Given women's relatively lower earnings, women find it more difficult to save money for retirement and many more just cannot afford to save.

· Today, the maximum amount a single individual can receive from OAS (Old Age Security) and GIS (Guaranteed Income Supplement) combined is $14,033.
This amount is below the poverty line if one were to live in a large Canadian city.

· *Fourteen per cent of senior women* live in poverty according to Statistics Canada.

· *24% of women with disabilities aged 65 and over lived in a low-income situation*, more than twice the figure for senior men with disabilities, 11% of whom had low incomes

*Solutions*

The CPP is an earnings-related pension plan run by the federal government for all workers regardless of their employment status.

This program includes all workers and if strengthened could provide stable and secure pensions that will allow women to retire with dignity. **

Improving the public pension program is the solution. Doubling the amount paid under the CPP and increasing the GIS by 15 percent will raise all seniors out of poverty and guarantee retirement security.

Consider asking your candidate the following questions:

Q. Will your party commit to ensuring a secure retirement for Canadian workers by doubling the CPP benefit?

Q. Will your party commit to ensuring Canada's poorest seniors avoid desperate poverty by increasing the GIS by 15 percent within the first six months of being elected?

Closing the Gap - First Nations want action on Poverty

2011-04-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

First Nations people are just like you. Raising their families and living good, productive lives.

However, social conditions and economic circumstances continue to make First Nations people among the most marginalized citizens of Canada. The facts are staggering and are only getting worse.

Something needs to be done.

To see the full report Closing the Gap 2011

During this election campaign, we feel it’s time that Canada’s parliamentarians commit to addressing First Nations poverty. Once elected, we urge them to take action.

We would like to see:

A First Minister’s Meeting on Aboriginal People with the goal of developing a comprehensive strategy to close the gap between First Nations people and all Canadians.
Budget provisions to increase support to First Nations families through investments to reduce child poverty, equalize education funding to be on-par with the provinces, address the housing deficit and homelessness, and include new employment programs including skills and training.
Resolution of long-standing issues with the First Nation’s labour force.

More on Immigration policies - Keep Families Apart?

2011-04-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

Missing their elders; Immigration policies keeping families apart

The Leader-Post (Regina)

Sat Apr 9 2011

Page: G1 / Front

Byline: Catherine Solyom

Tatyana Skorobogatko could well be the poster child for Canadian immigration.

Having landed in Montreal from Ukraine at 13, she is now an engineer for whom French and English have become more natural than her native Russian, sirloin steak or tacos more likely to appear on her dinner table than borscht or perogies.

But like many immigrants who have created new stories and good lives for themselves here, she now wants to share the wealth and remember the old stories -and for that she needs her babushka.

Tatyana, 27, applied to sponsor her grandmother for permanent residence in 2009, but with the federal government's drastically reduced targets for bringing in this class of immigrants -from 16,000 in 2010 to 11,200 in 2011 -and more than 147,000 others already on the wait-list around the world, she could easily wait another six years, until her grandmother turns 95.

"I'm afraid she will die before she ever gets in, before she ever sees my daughter," says Tatyana, whose baby girl is now five months old. "It's just inhumane to make someone wait like this. If you accept immigrants to come over, you have to allow them to see their families -if not don't let them come in."

The federal government says it is decreasing the number of parents and grandparents admitted as permanent residents in order to increase the number of spouses, children and skilled workers -who pay taxes.

Last year saw a record number of so-called "economic immigrants" -186,881 compared to 138,251 in 2006, when the Harper government took power -while family-class immigrants, spouses and parents included, were down 15 per cent to 60, 207, from 70,517 in 2006.

But critics say the new targets are symptomatic of the Harper government's overemphasis on immigrants as economic units, to the detriment of new Canadian families and ultimately the country's ability to attract "the best and the brightest" if it means leaving their families at home.

Leading up to a federal election the Harper government is preaching family values, they say, but not necessarily the value of family.

So how much is a grandmother worth?

When the 2011 internal visa targets for parents and grandparents were revealed in February through an access to information request, federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the House of Commons it was a choice that had to be made.

"There are trade-offs, and this government is focused on the priorities of Canadians which are economic growth and prosperity," he said during Question Period. "We need more newcomers working and paying taxes and contributing to our health-care system. That is the focus of our immigration system."

To be sure, any cost-benefit analysis of grandparents would have to include the increased demands they put on a health-care system that is already gasping for air.

According to a report released in October by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canadians over the age of 65 account for less than 14 per cent of the Canadian population, but consume nearly 44 per cent of all health-care dollars spent by provincial and territorial governments.

Brought down to the level of the individual, in 2008, the latest available year for data broken down by age group, provincial and territorial governments spent an average of $10,742 per Canadian age 65 and older, compared to $2,097 on those between age one and 64. Those 80 years and older, like Tatyana's grandmother, required the most spending, at $18,160 each -more than three times what was spent on seniors younger than age 70 ($5,828.)

The government can't ignore this reality, especially as the proportion of seniors in the Canadian population is expected to reach 20 per cent by 2026.

And as Kelli Fraser, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada points out, even with the reduced visa targets, the government "will maintain what is probably the most generous family reunification program for parents and grandparents in the world."

Indeed, Canada ranks third in the world after Sweden and Portugal on the 2010 Migrant Integration Policy Index released in February. A benchmark European study, the MIPEX measures a range of indicators, from paths to citizenship to public education.

And when it comes to family reunification policies in particular, Canada ranks second after Portugal.

Jack Jedwab, the executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies, who was presenting the MIPEX findings in Vancouver recently, said the reduced visa targets would not likely affect Canada's rank, because it is based on policies, not numbers.

Sweden, for example, lets in fewer immigrants per capita than Canada, but its policies are less restrictive.

The reduced visa targets do run counter to important Canadian values, however, says Jedwab, whose think tank conducts annual surveys on Canadian identity issues. And the targets seem to ignore the important benefits, economic and non-economic, that come from reuniting families.

Survey upon survey suggests that Canadians stand out for the importance they attribute to family and for having a larger, more generous definition of family; that they value the contribution of immigration to the country; that immigrants value family; and that they don't like the idea of cutting off children from parents and grandparents, Jedwab says.

Economically speaking, the costs and benefits associated with bringing in more parents and grandparents are not always clear, Jedwab adds.

Most would not pay income taxes, but nor are they entitled to old age security for 10 years after they enter the country. And they are nevertheless consumers -the transfer of funds outside the country to relatives unable to immigrate may be substantial.

"But there are also indirect benefits associated with having a strong family unit here that are difficult to value in economic terms. but may have an important impact nevertheless, especially if we want to continue to be a kindler, gentler nation."

For Tatyana, having her grandmother here would mean free childcare in a province where subsidized daycare is a huge advantage over other provinces, but is still difficult to come by.

And it would mean a link to her culture, language, and history, all but lost to her now.

She arrived in Canada as a teenager during what is known in Ukraine as the "Dark '90s" -a time when the end of Soviet-era price controls and the fire-sale privatization of the nation's assets led to a decline in living standards akin to the Great Depression 60 years earlier.

At the time, Quebec was the cheapest destination in Canada -requiring only $10,000 to immigrate -so her parents sold their apartment for $7,000 and added it to their $3,000 in savings. It helped that both she and her parents spoke French as a second language, as many Russian speakers do.

But after her mother committed suicide in 2008, Tatyana needed her grandmother by her side, a need that became more urgent when she had a baby girl in November.

"My grandmother cries on the phone when she hears the baby," Tatyana says, adding her grandmother was like a second mother to her until her departure. "She feels she'll never see her and I can't travel with a baby so young. There's the plane ride, then seven hours from Kyiv to Kharkiv."

Unfortunately, her application to sponsor her grandmother, Yevdokiya (Eva) Chernova, now 89, is still years away.

All sponsors of family-class immigrants are processed at the Centralized Process Region in Mississauga, Ont. But while it takes only 37 days to assess an applicant wishing to sponsor a spouse or child, it takes 42 months to assess someone wanting to bring over a parent or grandparent, a delay that has more than doubled over the past decade. CIC is currently processing applications received in Sept. 2007.

Only once the sponsor has been approved, however, do they move on to Step 2 of the process, assessing the sponsoree. According to CIC, it will take 27 months to assess an applicant from Ukraine, the final test being the medical exam. (Applications for permanent residence will not be accepted if the person's health would cause excessive demand on health or social services in Canada.) But at the Kyiv office of CIC, where Chernova travelled overnight to make her application, visa targets for parents and grandparents have been slashed from 440 in 2010 to 25 in 2011.

Fraser said parents and grandparents waiting abroad can apply for visitors' visas in the meantime.

Chernova's application for a visitor's visa has been denied, however, on the basis that she might choose to stay in Canada illegally after the visa expires to be with her family. There is no way to prove that, of course, or to disprove it, CIC told her.

Up in Park Extension, one of the most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in the country, and a traditional landing pad for newcomers, Justin Trudeau is vigorously campaigning for a second term.

The "new-Canadian voter" centralized in urban Canada, is the group most affected by the immigrant parents issue, and it could have a big impact on the outcome of the election.

It's no surprise that both Liberals and Conservatives are pledging their allegiance to this core block.

Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has been unavailable to comment on the issue of visas.

But in Little India, Trudeau, as Liberal Immigration critic, says he hears the same complaints from his constituents all the time: People are discouraged and despondent about not being able to bring their parents or grandparents over, as permanent residents or visitors.

There are no official figures available for the number of parents or grandparents refused visitor's visas. But Trudeau says that anecdotal evidence suggests the Conservative government has consistently reduced the number of multiple-entry visas given out abroad -or is for some reason targeting his riding.

These parents and grandparents are unlikely to either claim refugee status, or work under the table, and they will live with their children, not at Shady Acres down the street, he said.

The cuts to visas awarded at the New Delhi mission in particular, from 4,500 in 2010 to 2,500 in 2011, have hit hard in Little India, where many a campaign event is held.

"Right now the wait times are at eight or nine years (for New Delhi)," Trudeau says. "With these cuts you're pushing delays to 12 to 15 years. Most of the people will end up seeing a coffin before they see their grandchildren, to be blunt."

The Liberal government had increased the visa targets to 18,000 in 2005, and increased the budget for CIC to process them, and were making it easier to get multiple entry visas for people waiting in line. But the Harper government has reversed that trend.

"The central question is what kind of Canada are we trying to build? Obviously one that is prosperous and creates jobs, but also one that is more compassionate and generous and more respectful of the things we value in life more than money -like health and family," Trudeau said.

He suggested most sponsors would be open to paying into a private health-care fund for their parents or grandparents, to avoid the drain on the health-care system.

"How we treat our elders and our new Canadians is so important for the long-term growth of this country."

Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer who has been watching the backlog of applicants expand over the last decade, says both the Liberals and the Conservatives are to blame for the bottleneck.

"The (Liberals') 18,000 was a drop in the bucket," said Kurland, the editor of Lexbase which first published the 2011 visa targets. "The Liberals knew how many people were already waiting and the target, and at that rate, the inventory would continue to grow and processing times would continue to lengthen. And they lured more people into the system by reporting "historic" waiting times, instead of telling people up front how long it would take if they applied today for their visa. Why? They wanted to avoid political criticism for lengthening processing periods, because they did not want to say no to their core support groups."

Back at home in the Mercier district of Montreal, Tatyana is spending what is left of her maternity leave trying to find a way to get her grandmother to Canada. A lawyer she consulted told her that for $2,000 he could probably do for her what he's done for four other clients in the same situation -secure a visitor's visa for her grandmother on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Eva Chernova survived three years of a Nazi labour camp until she was liberated in 1945. She just can't get a foot in the door in Canada.

But Tatyana doesn't want to go that route. "I guess you can solve anything with money but that's not fair either. Something is wrong with a system that if you bring in a lawyer you win, and if you don't you don't get anywhere."

Her grandmother will continue to travel on the overnight train to Kyiv to re-apply for a visitor's visa. And Tatyana will keep trying to get an answer from CIC on when the sponsorship process will be finished, and on what she can do to prove her grandmother won't stay illegally if given a visitor's visa while she's waiting.

A CIC customer service representative told her she couldn't give her any information over the phone, and they don't receive letters. Tatyana could write a letter to the government, she was told, but the government won't necessarily open it.

BY THE NUMBERS

37 days

The time it takes Citizenship and Immigration Canada to assess the sponsor of a spouse or child.

42 months

The time it takes CIC to assess the sponsor of a parent or grandparent.

60,207

Number of family-class applicants (spouses, children, parents and grandparents) given permanent residence in 2010, down 15 per cent since 2006.

186,881

Number of economic immigrants admitted to Canada in 2010, up 35 per cent since 2006.

96,147

The number of foreign students allowed into Canada in 2010, up 33 per cent from 2006.

182,322

The number of temporary foreign workers who entered Canada in 2010, up 31 per cent over 2006.

24,693

The number of refugees given permanent residence in Canada in 2010, down 25 per cent since 2006.
Length: 2278 words

Canada's Reality Check Think Canada is a great place to live?

2011-04-11T05:08:00.000-07:00

Think again.

Use this checklist to ensure nothing less than a Canada with Human Rights for ALL its citizens!
Does your candidate support:

* policies and programs that are transparent and accountable?

* a national child care program that is universal, accessible, affordable, good quality, secure, public and non-profit?

* a federal housing strategy that will create affordable, stable, accessible and safe housing for women and children?

* a federal poverty reduction strategy that invests in Canada's social infrastructure to reduce the impact of poverty on ALL women and children?

* economic security for women that includes good jobs, equal wages, and decent EI and social assistance entitlements?

* a federal strategy to end violence against women and girls, based on human rights principles, to ensure that they are no longer 'over-policed and under-protected'?

* repeal of the unnecessary and expensive criminal justice reforms, and spend those billions of tax dollars on social, economic, health and educational services instead of prisons?

What are Canadians really afraid of when it comes to crime??

2011-04-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

April 9, 2011

What are Canadians really afraid of when it comes to crime?

By Ian Brown
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Stephen Harper has been criticized for pushing crime legislation when crime rates have long been dropping.

Should you ever decide to ask your fellow Canadians why they support getting tough on crime even though crime has been falling for 10 years, you will have the following conversation over and over again (all replies guaranteed verbatim):

Nerdy Interlocutor: Why do you want the government to get tough on crime when the crime rate's already down?

Tough-on-crime citizen: But the violent crimes are going up.

NI: Actually, they're not.

TOCC: But the rapes, they're all unreported!

NI: Actually, unreported sexual assaults - at least according to the General Social Survey on Victimization, which is how Statistics Canada measures crimes that aren't reported to the police - haven't risen in 10 years.

TOCC: But the really violent criminals, they get out after two or three years.

NI: That actually hardly ever happens. Canada has severe sentences, compared to much of the rest of the world. Has for a long time.

TOCC: Okay, but the judges let them out because they know there isn't any room in the jails.

NI: Not the really violent guys, they don't.

[Pause]

TOCC: Okay, maybe it's not so much in Canada. But people see these violent scenes, people getting beheaded with machetes in other countries. Maybe they think the country should stay the way it is.

---------------------------

Lots of people labour under these assumptions, with good reason - just not the reasons you may think. Now, a chance has come to sort things out: As of yesterday, crime is an election issue.

Unholstering his arsenal of campaign points on Friday in Toronto, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised Canadians that, in return for the small favour of a majority government, he'll gather up the last 11 crime bills the Conservatives tried to introduce, bundle them and put them through Parliament as an omnibus bill. He would take on organized crime, end house arrest, eliminate pardons and more, all in his majority's first 100 days.

Before that happens, a brief look at some of the moves the Harper government has already made might be in order. It was a crime bill, after all - Bill S-10, one of roughly 60 pieces of crime legislation it has introduced in its time in office - that caused Mr. Harper's government to be found in contempt of Parliament. Another law-and-order bill, the Truth in Sentencing Act, passed last year, is lengthening sentences and filling jails so fast that it alone will double the cost of the federal and provincial penal system in five years, to nearly $10-billion.

While we're at it, we might want to ask ourselves why we seem to feel such a burning itch to be tougher on crime. The crime rate has been dropping for a decade, even though 44 per cent of Canadians think crime rates have risen. The volume of crime reported to police is down 17 per cent over the past 10 years. The crime-severity index, which measures the seriousness of reported crime, is 22 per cent lower than it was in 1999. Violent crime is off 12 per cent since 2000.

But the Conservatives want to put more people in jail, and 62 per cent of Canadians believe longer sentences are the best way to reduce crime. In fact, as we'll see, lengthening sentences has no effect on crime rates. Yet many of us seem to want to be hard and unforgiving anyway. Why?

Fear and trembling

To hear Mr. Harper tell it, when he insists the Conservatives have made Canada safe by putting "real criminals behind bars," you'd think we were all cowering in the corner. But in fact very few people are afraid they personally will be victims of crime.

Statistics Canada's 2009 criminal-victimization survey (of nearly 2,000 Canadians aged 15 and over) found that 93 per cent of us feel "somewhat" or "very" safe from crime, a number that hasn't changed in five years.

Ninety per cent of us feel fine walking alone in the dark. Eighty-three per cent aren't afraid to be at home alone at night. A quarter of the people surveyed actually reported being the victim of a crime in the previous 12 months (theft, most commonly), yet most of them still weren't afraid of criminals.

But that's a dreary survey. To see what I mean in the flesh - and blood - let me take you to booming Abbotsford, B.C., an hour's drive west of Vancouver in the spread-eagled Fraser Valley.

For two years running, in 2008 and 2009, this once-tiny farming town had the highest murder rate of any community in Canada over 100,000 people - 5.22 murders per 100,000 residents. A deeply religious town (more than 80 churches), Abbotsford is also in the riding of former Reform Party MP Randy White, one of the original sheriffs on the law-and-order landscape.

But Abbotsford straddles a long stretch of undefended border, and it's a Tunnel of Love for drug smuggling and gang activity. Pot, meth and E go south; coke, guns and freshly laundered cash come back. Some of Canada's most insouciant crime clans and gangs have operated here. Residents like to boast that back in the day, one in five houses in many parts of Abbotsford was a grow-op - a number the police don't deny. Eight of the nine murders that occurred in 2009 were gang-related. Somebody should write a TV series about the place.

Yet if you imagine Abbotsford as a hideous bullet-pocked hole, you are very wrong: It's a pleasant, friendly, utterly middle-class, suburban city. The parking lots are stuffed with brand new fully loaded $60,000 trucks. Herds of good-looking families roam the sidewalks. The city library is luxurious, bustling - only a brochure pinned to the message board advertising a "support group for people grieving the loss of those who died by homicide" hints at the city's shadow.

No one I meet professes to be alarmed by the city's criminals. In the food court of the local mall, an 89-year-old woman makes a few dubious remarks about seeing East Indians (heavily represented in this part of B.C.) in crime stories, but she says she's never concerned for her own safety. "I just kept my head down and my nose clean."

"I don't think anyone worries about it until it happens to you," her companion, a man in his 70s, adds. He has a Cockney accent like a small tray. "But nowadays with cellphones, you can get ahold of the cops pretty quick."

Then I run into Bill and Pam, a couple who own and operate five long-haul semis. They earn upwards of half-a-million dollars a year for their trouble. Bill is in his 60s, and full of news: Three of his pals have just been sentenced to 60 years in the U.S. for smuggling cannabis. (So it's not surprising that the couple asked me not to print their last name.)

He's been offered the chance to do so many times, and has been tempted. But he likes his freedom too much. "It's so easy to do, so easy to get away with. You can make $75,000 a trip. Seven hockey bags will bring you 50 grand." He guesses the cops catch 10 per cent of what crosses.

Bill's buddy Ted was nabbed with 1,300 kilos under the floor of a truck full of cattle, a messy spot the border guards normally don't care to search. Some smugglers stuff it in PVC pipe, cover it with wood chips, haul it under the city garbage - common knowledge in Abbotsford. But even though meth labs have blown up across the street from where he and Pam were standing, Bill has never "particularly worried" he might be a crime victim.

"Most of the murders are targeted," Pam explains. Her fingers are thick with nice gold rings.

But as personally unthreatened by crime as they say they are, everyone I meet wants the government to be tough on crime. Darshan Singh Dheliwal and his pals consider Stephen Harper "a child" and "not progressive" enough to vote for, but they still think Canada "has to be more like America. Not less than 10 years jail."

Bill isn't a Harper devotee - he's voting Conservative this year for the first time - but he still says things like "if you get 15 years, you should serve 15 years." It's the easiness and showiness of the drug money and the way it beggars traditional notions of work and reward that upset him.

"I just hate seeing all these kids, rolling in and playing Joe Cool because that's the only way you can make it. You can't make it here" - he nods at the mall's fast-food stands - "at $8 an hour. Abbotsford's like New York City now - a city I love, but everybody's trying to sell you something."

What's the antidote? Something disciplined and reliable, like a good hard spanking.

Punishment without crime

If you think this is just socially conservative Abbotsford speaking, go west, to Vancouver South, one of the closely fought middle-class, immigrant-stuffed, formerly Liberal ridings all the candidates have been trying to win over with tough talk. Conservative challenger Wai Young has talked about the "drip, drip, drip" of petty, often-unreported crime. Provincial MLA Kash Heed says crime issues get a lot of attention in the riding.

Yet there's extraordinarily little crime to be found - mostly break-ins (down 7 per cent last year in Vancouver) and stolen cars (down 20 percent). In the pharmacy down the street from the Chong Lee Market, Dan Huzyk, 64, laughs and tells me he can remember only two crimes in the nearly 40 years he has lived here - a break-in, and a "child rapist" caught by his neighbours 20 years ago. He's voting for the Tories anyway. Annie, the market's 40-year-old Korean manager, can't remember any crimes either. But she's familiar with the local community-policing office, just in case.

Constable Wef Fung, a patrol officer in Chinatown here, has his own theories about immigrants' appetites for law-and-order talk. "I think as a people, Asians are particularly prone to protecting our bottom line," he says. "Back in China, the police can sometimes seem corrupt. But because they have different rules, they can do a lot more than we can. So immigrants come here and they're used to cops and officials doing stuff for them."

So Mr. Harper may be filling that bill. In any event, it's becoming clear that what makes people susceptible to tough talk is more complicated than fear. It's also more evasive than facts.

One of the things you see a lot these days when professional criminologists talk about the Harper government is the Twitch - a combination eye-widening/brow-rub that expresses Total Professional Exasperation. At the moment the Twitch is being performed by Rosemary Gartner, an American-born University of Toronto criminologist who happens to be one of the world's leading experts on interpreting crime statistics, a notoriously swampy subject.

Dr. Gartner explains how, back in 1993, a parliamentary committee (dominated by Mulroney Conservatives, no less) counseled restraint in building jails and handing out sentences. "And that was when crime was going up," Dr. Gartner says. "Here we are today, with crime going down, and the Harper people are increasing incarceration." Eye-widen, brow-rub, head-shake, twitch.

Mr. Harper and his parliamentary colleagues can throw as many people as they want into jail, and keep them there for as long as they like. None of it will affect crime rates.

Yes, this is true: Crime rates are not affected by how many people go to jail.

Until recently, the rate at which Canada incarcerated prisoners had been restrained and steady since the 1890s - for more than a century, in other words - at between 80 and 110 adults per 100,000 people. The United States started out where we did, but since the 1980s has almost quadrupled its incarceration rate, to 760 prisoners per 100,000 people, the highest in the world (China runs a distant second).

If it were true that jailing more criminals made society safer from crime, the U.S. should have seen greater rates of decline in its crime than we have. But the fluctuation in the U.S. homicide rate mirrors ours, exactly. Both homicide rates (the American one being consistently about four times ours) peaked in 1975 and both have declined ever since.

The effect is obvious - just not the cause

So incarceration doesn't improve crime rates. Neither do the longer sentences Mr. Harper promises to push through, though there is some evidence they make inmates more likely to re-offend. Neither do mandatory-minimum sentences, also in the works, which can interfere with rehabilitation.

So why has crime dropped? Excellent question. Theories abound. Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, credits the aging baby boom. "There were twice as many young men in the population in the 1970s as there are now." Young men commit most crimes.

James Hackler of the University of Victoria thinks "the strongest answer to crime rates is equality of income": Countries such as Scandinavia and Japan, where the ratio between CEO pay and worker pay is smaller than it is here, have lower crime rates.

Another theory points to the birth-control pill and even legalized abortion: Fewer unwanted children equals fewer social misfits.

The phrase you hear most from criminologists is "there are no quick answers." Grisly, high-profile crimes and grossly lenient sentencing get attention, but statistically they're rare: Sentences for major assault, drug trafficking and attempted murder have stayed the same or risen in the past 10 years.

"Everybody wants to be safe," University of Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob observes. "And I think you can't challenge that desire. And it's very comforting to think that Parliament can sit there with a dial and turn it down and automatically lower the crime rate."

But Parliament can't, and has long known it. "Go back 50 years," Dr. Doob says, "there's report after report saying, 'Let's use prison with restraint.'" Again and again - at least 16 times between 1956 and 2003 - knowledgeable and brain-studded parliamentary committees have concluded that where sentences and jail time are concerned, "preference should be given to the least restrictive alternative" (1982) because (1993) "costly repressive measures ... fail to deter crime."

So the Harper government's stance defies not just evidence but half a century of Canadian intellectual tradition. To many criminologists, that feels like heresy. "Nobody that I know who has any expertise about these things believes in what the Tories are doing," Simon Fraser's Prof. Boyd says.

Still, its iconoclasm helps explain why Mr. Harper and his colleagues find their anti-crime thrust exciting, new and serious - a genuine reformation of the criminal-justice system's priorities. They have also sold it brilliantly. One of the ways they've done so is, as Harold Albrecht, the Conservative MP for Kitchener-Conestoga, says, "by standing up for victims." That's a lot more effective, politically, than standing up for a criminal's future.

Just before the election call, egged on by the victims of Montreal fraudster Earl Jones, Mr. Harper's government eliminated automatic parole review (APR). That will keep Mr. Jones in the slammer a little longer. But it will, much more seriously, affect many young, first-time, non-violent offenders (drug charges, break-ins) who will now serve longer sentences and run greater risks of reoffending when they get out (which APR was meant to prevent).

"Being in prison doesn't make you a good citizen," Graham Stewart, the retired director of the John Howard Society, a prisoner-rights organization, explains. "It just makes you a good prisoner."

Ed McIsaac, the national director of policy at John Howard, estimates that axing APR alone will add 400 "bed years" to Canada's prisoner load - which at the average daily cost of $322.51 per federal inmate, is $47-million a year. That's about the same amount Mr. Jones stole from his victims over the course of 25 years.

The irony is that these experts' elite outrage may help fuel the public's embrace of the crime bills. The federal Ministry of Justice has dismissed statistics as "an excuse not to get tough on criminals." Ian Brodie, Stephen Harper's former chief of staff, said at a McGill University forum in 2009 that "every time we proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, sociologists, criminologists, defence lawyers and Liberals attacked us for proposing measures that the evidence apparently showed did not work. Politically it helped us tremendously to be attacked by this coalition of university types."

That's the thing: Tough-on-crime sentiment may be difficult to justify logically, but it is easy to feel. The question is, why has it become seductive to more and more of us?

Souls divided

One reason, of course, is that crime victimizes people, and happens more or less uncontrollably, and always has, and so it scares us - if not personally, then existentially. Crime never, ever disappears. It is our shadow as a society, a source of shame: What if we're responsible for its existence? No one would argue that we shouldn't try to control it, and reduce it whenever and wherever we can, if we can.

But as the evidence shows, crime is also a force unto itself, vast and multi-tentacled, often counter-intuitive. The things that actually reduce crime - sophisticated parole programs, rehabilitation systems, anti-poverty intiatives, education, mental-health centres, retraining (all of which the Tories have supported) - cost money and time, and are not quick or politically easy fixes.

Crime is so vast, worrying and intractable that when someone like Mr. Harper starts to crusade against it, it almost feels brave to join his cause - no matter how cynically or sincerely it's touted.

Whatever the reason, though, our rejection of social civility as a cure is bound to have a profound effect on how we see ourselves as Canadians.

Tom Flanagan, the former Conservative campaign manager who is now a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, once said that the difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives believe people can't change, that human nature isn't malleable.

For many years, Canada's approach to criminality was, in that sense, liberal - we relied less on prison and more on rehabilitation, on changing people. Now we seem to be headed the other way.

"If you think that people don't change," says Mr. Stewart, of the John Howard Society, "if you punish people for what they are, as opposed to what they do - then all this restraint in punishment [that we've practised before now] makes no sense."

If people are unlikely to change, the bad ones can be locked up. That way the bad people will be in one place, and the good people will be in another place, and we'll never have to be confused as to who is whom.

We think we want to be tough on crime because we're afraid of criminals, but it turns out we're not. We're afraid of ourselves, and who we might turn out to be.

Thankfully, the election - now that Mr. Harper has made crime an issue - gives us a chance to choose.

With files from Rick Cash.

Upcoming federal leader's debate

2011-04-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

On April 12 (English) and April 14 (French) the federal leaders' will debate the issues on television. Let's make sure that topics of importance to you are discussed.

Canadians have the opportunity to submit questions to the broadcast consortium who select the questions. Choose your question and send it to question@electiondebate2011.ca

Key Questions to Candidates of All Parties

2011-04-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Interesting - the most popular page views of this blog is for the Poverty Fact Sheet - So here are the qustions to ask the candidate -

April 7, 2011 (Final Revised)

Federal Election 2011: Key Questions to Candidates of All Parties

We are asking each party to respond to the following questions (a total of 10 questions):

The most recent Focus Canada poll by Environics found that ‘reducing child poverty’ ranks as one of the five top spending priorities for government according to Canadians. A robust majority (88%) of Canadians believe the gap between the rich and poor has widened in the past decade and 81% believe that government should reduce that income gap.

Question 1:

An effective Plan to Make Canada Poverty-Free must include a multi-year strategy with targets, timetables and transparent accountability.

Is your party willing to adopt specific targets and timelines to significantly reduce poverty? Will your party commit to reducing poverty by 25% in five years, and 50% in ten years with the goal of eradicating poverty within a generation?

Question 2:

The Canada Child Tax Benefit and National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) together play an important role in reducing poverty for low-income families, but it has not been increased (beyond annual indexing) since 2007.

· Will your party raise the combined Canada Child Tax Benefit and NCBS to a maximum of $5,400 ($2011) per child per year? Will you ensure that all low income families, including those on income assistance, receive and keep the full benefit?

Question 3:

A universal, affordable system of early childhood education and care services (ECEC) that are developmental for children while supporting parents in work, training and education is a critical element in a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy. But the patchwork of services in most of Canada means there are only enough regulated ECEC spaces for 20% of children (0 – 5 years).

· With our partners in Code Blue for Child Care, we ask whether your party will commit to make a system of high quality early childhood education and child care a reality by the end of the next decade for all who want it? If so, what steps would you take to implement that commitment?

Question 4:

Housing is the single largest expense for low-income families. One in every 4 households pays more than 30% of their income on housing. Children under age 15 comprise more than half the number of Canadians living in housing that is unaffordable, substandard and over crowded.

Will your party commit to developing a national strategy for affordable housing enshrined in legislation, and including substantial federal funding for social housing?

Question 5:

One third of low income children live in families where at least one parent works full-time, full-year. An effective anti-poverty plan needs to ensure that every adult working full-time, full-year earns a living wage that enables her/him to lift their family out of poverty and avoid financial stress. This would require higher wages and an enriched Working Income Tax Benefit.

· Will your party commit to undertaking strategies to achieve sustaining employment that pays living wages?

· Will you increase the Working Income Tax Benefit to $2,400 per year for all employed adults?

Question 6:

Only approximately 40% of Canadians are currently eligible for Employment Insurance should they temporarily be without work, even though EI was designed to protect workers from falling into poverty during periods of wage loss.

· How will you improve eligibility for Employment Insurance?

Question 7:

The poverty rate for new immigrant families and racialized communities is alarmingly high.

· What plans do you have to improve the economic conditions of new immigrants and racialized communities living in poverty?

Question 8:

The persistence of high poverty rates among Aboriginal peoples is a continuing shame for Canada.

· Will your party commit to a poverty reduction strategy for Aboriginal peoples that addresses the basic needs of every Aboriginal child and youth?

· What strategies will your party develop to ensure those in First Nations communities have adequate food, clothing, clean drinking water, safe housing, early childhood education and child care?

Question 9

Post-secondary education and training are crucial elements to develop a productive workforce.

· What will your party do to improve access to post-secondary education as well as opportunities for up-to-date training and skills upgrading for low-income adults?

Question 10

Canadians with disabilities are often subject to ineffective and stigmatizing systems of income support and are more likely to live in poverty than other Canadians.

· What steps will your party take to address the income needs for those who will not soon enter the labour market? Will your party immediately make the Disability Tax Credit (DTC) refundable?

Campaign 2000 is a non-partisan, cross-Canada network of over 120 national, provincial and community organizations united in securing the implementation of the 1989 House of Commons' resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000. A list of Campaign partners is available at http://www.campaign2000.ca/about/partners.html.

Vote to Make Poverty History

2011-04-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

A federal election is a great opportunity to advance our campaign to make poverty history. Please help to make this an election that will make a difference.

We can greatly improve the chances of governments taking serious actions to make poverty history at home and abroad if we make poverty a key election issue. If we can use the election to secure commitments from party leaders on anti-poverty policies, it will be much easier to get them to keep these promises after an election. We need to show candidates that many voters care about poverty and want to know what candidates and parties will do to make poverty history.

That is why we have launched the Vote to Make Poverty History non-partisan, third party campaign with the following goals:

Make poverty an issue during the election campaign;
Get a significant number of candidates to endorse Make Poverty History’s campaign goals;
Secure a commitment from political parties on Make Poverty History goals in party platforms and leader’s statements;
Motivate voters to vote to make poverty history;
Help to create favourable conditions for realizing Make Poverty History goals after the election.

GROUPS ACROSS CANADA CALL FOR AN INQUIRY INTO THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER

2011-04-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

March 31 2011 For Immediate Release

Three Mile Island taught us all that nuclear power is inherently dangerous. With Chernobyl the whole world witnessed the awesome power of a total nuclear meltdown.

At Fukushima we are seeing simultaneous partial meltdowns in 3 reactors and 4 spent fuel pools.

Canada's reactors have a different design, but the potential for catastrophe is ever present. It was not an earthquake and tsunami that caused Japan's nuclear catastrophe -- it was the resulting total electrical blackout at the plant: the loss of onsite and offsite power. Such a blackout can be caused in a variety of ways.

Like other countries, Canada needs to reassess the risks and benefits of nuclear technology. This is too important a matter for nuclear engineers alone; it must be a societal decision.
Federal political parties are being challenged by groups across Canada to declare their support for a far-reaching non-partisan Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Nuclear Power in Canada, independent of the nuclear industry and the CNSC, to be launched at the earliest possible date.

As part of that inquiry process, the groups are asking that no new licenses for nuclear power plants - whether new build projects or refurbishment projects, or off-site transportation of nuclear wastes produced by nuclear reactors - be granted until the Royal Commission has concluded its work.

Groups from across Canada are joining together in this appeal in hopes that the people of Canada will be adequately consulted on the future of this inherently dangerous industry. "The basic question is this: do Canadians wish nuclear power production to be expanded or to be phased out?" said Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

"The endorsing groups are unanimous in their view that the Canadian Nuclear Industry, the Canadian Regulatory Regime and the Canadian and Provincial governments have failed to disseminate sufficient objective scientific information about the hazards of nuclear reactors, the specific health dangers of MEDIA RELEASE radioactive exposures, and the potential ecological consequences of major reactor malfunctions, in language that citizens and decision-makers can readily understand," said Michel Duguay, coordinator of le Mouvement Sortons le Québec du Nucléaire.

These groups are also unanimous in their feeling that political accountability and transparency has been insufficient in the nuclear field, as governments have often seemed to depend almost exclusively on the advice of the Canadian nuclear industry and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, without a sufficiently open and democratic process at the political level.
These groups feel that the risks of nuclear power should be assessed not only from the point of view of the physicists and engineers who populate the Canadian nuclear industry and its licensing agency, the CNSC, but also by independent bio-medical experts and people trained in the fields of biology and ecology, as well as experts drawn from the social sciences, who are independent of any promotional bias, and by our democratic institutions of government.
"Most importantly, however, the groups feel that ordinary citizens must have an opportunity to voice their views on nuclear power and to explore the implications of alternative non-nuclear energy technologies and strategies" said Michel Fugère of le Mouvement Vert Mauricie.
Before proceeding any further down the nuclear path, we ask the Canadian government to finally give ordinary Canadians a chance to debate the risks and benefits of nuclear power in relation to its alternatives in a politically meaningful forum.

Additional Background Material:
(1) List of endorsing groups as of March 31 2011 http://www.ccnr.org/concerns.pdf (2) "Meltdowns in CANDU reactors" http://www.ccnr.org/Melt_CANDU.pdf (3) CNSC safety concerns about CANDUs : www.ccnr.org/concerns.pdf

Contacts:
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., CCNR President, (514) 839 7214 Michel Duguay Ph.D., MSQN Coordinator, (418) 802 2740 Michel Fugère, Mouvmeent Vert Mauricie (MVM), (819) 532 2073 - see list (www.ccnr.org/list.pdf) for contacts in various provinces

National Council of Women of Canada

Parliament gets a makeover; An influx of young women could help change Canadian politics for good,

Imporant information you should read about the gun registry

Women Win One-Quarter of Seats in Newly Elected House of Commons May 3rd, 2011

Where to look for results, and analysis

Reminder - Monday, May 2nd is Election Day in Canada

Child care takes centre stage

Don’t Play Politics with Women’s Lives Says Equality Coalition

Right to Water

Media Release - Campaign 2000

National Council of Women of Canada Urges Women to Vote May 2nd

Aboriginal Women and Girls

Law and Order Agenda -

Petition in support of the long gun registry

Access to Education on Reserves

Interesting comments to voters on Middle East Issues

Violence Against Women and Girls in Canada

Canada Pension Plan

Why do you vote?

Bring attention to early childhood care and education

Take a Girl to Vote!

Equal Voice Launches Take a Girl to Vote: Calls on Canadians to Promote Political Engagement of Girls and Young Women

Sign the Petition - Violence Against Women & the Long Gun Registry

Action Canada for Population and Development and Canadian Federation for Sexual Health to Announce Results

Disabled Canadians ask who will fight for them

Child Care Report Card

Aboriginal Candidates

Letter from Business and Professional Women (a Federate Member of National Council of Women of Canada)

Senator Tommy Banks letter re Harper’s gradual destruction of our Canada

Libraries and Archives at Risk

Young Women Demand a Voice

Young Women Demand an Equal Voice in the Federal Election 2011

Support for Midwifery

Important questions asked of the political parties

Official Development Assistance (ODA)_____

Upcoming event in Ottawa - all are welcome

Female Candidates

Children and the 2011 Election - Questions for the candidates.

Women and Pensions - questions to ask.

Closing the Gap - First Nations want action on Poverty

During this election campaign, we feel it’s time that Canada’s parliamentarians commit to addressing First Nations poverty. Once elected, we urge them to take action.

More on Immigration policies - Keep Families Apart?

Canada's Reality Check Think Canada is a great place to live?

What are Canadians really afraid of when it comes to crime??

What are Canadians really afraid of when it comes to crime?

Stephen Harper has been criticized for pushing crime legislation when crime rates have long been dropping.

Upcoming federal leader's debate

Key Questions to Candidates of All Parties

Vote to Make Poverty History

GROUPS ACROSS CANADA CALL FOR AN INQUIRY INTO THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER

Equal Voice Launches Take a Girl to Vote:
Calls on Canadians to Promote Political Engagement of Girls and Young Women