By Rebekah Sears | Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 - 7:57AM
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Last week the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement began a tele-learning series called Provincial Poverty Reduction Strategies, which will include conversations and presentations of government employees involved in the various provincial poverty reduction strategies across Canada.
On last week’s call, Tamarack’s Eric Leviten-Reid interviewed Director Donna O’Brien and senior policy analyst Daniel Mason with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Poverty Reduction Strategy.The most effective elements for success, according to O’Brien and Mason, included the strong mandate and support from the government, the cooperation between provincial departments, and the constant dialogue with stakeholders. Read more »
The government has refused to produce uncensored documents relating to the question of whether Canada is complicit in the torture of Afghan detainees despite the request of the House of Commons. The government claims that it would compromise national security to do so. But national security is no excuse to avoid accountability: accountability is a core principle of both democracy and public justice. Canadians have a right to know what is being done in our name. Representative democracy is no threat to national security. Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Friday, March 26th, 2010 - 3:01PM
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With poverty most visible at the local level, it is important for municipalities to get involved. But the reasons for getting involved go beyond just visibility – with the cutting and scaling back of provincial and federal programs, starting in the mid 90s, and continuing throughout the 2000s, it comes down to necessity.
This week the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) released a report, analyzing the importance of municipal services in light of insufficient federal and provincial programs to keep people from falling into poverty. But can municipalities handle the problems left by the federal and provincial governments? Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Thursday, March 25th, 2010 - 3:52PM
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In Canada, our labour laws extend to all workers, both in the public and private sectors. These laws include the maintaining of proper and safe working conditions, and ensuring that complete wages are issued. All workers, be they citizens, permanent residents, immigrants or temporary foreign workers, documented and undocumented fall under this protection.
Unfortunately, despite our laws incidents of abuse, including the withholding of wages still occur in Canada, and often in connection with temporary foreign workers. Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 - 3:24PM
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Last week, Chandra, Kathryn and I attended “Radically Ordinary: An evening with Shane Claiborne” at a downtown church in Ottawa. The sanctuary was packed with people of all ages representing a wide variety of churches and faith backgrounds.
A very dynamic speaker and co-founder of The Simple Way, a Philadelphia based movement promoting community living and care for one another, Shane challenged us to re-evaluate our own motives and actions in the mission of bringing love and hope to a broken world. Suffering is something most people try to avoid at all costs, but part of Shane’s challenge was for people to enter places of suffering and injustice to bring hope. Read more »
Welcome to the March issue of Ola!, the monthly e-newsletter of Citizens for Public Justice. Spring has come early to the nation’s capital, and as the snow has disappeared, the days have grown longer, and Parliament has resumed after a two month prorogation, there’s a new energy in our work for justice. Join us as we speak out for change and call our governments to live out public justice. Read more »
“There. It’s 8:30 p.m. Turn out the lights and settle down.” This might sound like you’re trying to get the kids to bed. Be assured; on March 27th you won’t want them to go to sleep quite yet! Not, that is, if you are among the millions of people around the globe who will be celebrating Earth Hour. Read more »
The report looks at a variety of indicators for measuring the state of child public health, as well as priorities for improving health. At the top of the list is the connection of socio-economic status to the state of health. Children born and raised in low income families are often impacted by inadequate access to food, affordable housing and other necessities. This can often lead to long-term health problems.
Nevertheless, the report concluded that compared to “some” countries, Canada is doing pretty well in terms of fighting child poverty. But which countries are these? Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Monday, March 15th, 2010 - 3:08PM
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Until very recently, the United States Government has been using measures developed in the 1960s to determine the number of people living in poverty. Developed under President Johnson in 1963 and 64, these concepts may be a little outdated, to say the least!
But last week, according to the New York Times, President Obama decided to look into new measures of poverty to potentially replace those developed under President Johnson. Read more »
Poverty continues to be a significant problem within Canada. To address this issue several provinces and municipalities, including Ottawa, have developed poverty reduction strategies. As poverty is most visible at the local level, municipalities must play a role in reduction. However, they cannot succeed alone. The participation of the federal government is crucial in order to set national standards, offer support and direct resources. Action, however, has remained firmly in the domain of municipalities and provinces. When will the federal government step up and take strong action to eliminate poverty in Canada? Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Friday, March 12th, 2010 - 10:39AM
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Earlier this week Chandra and I attended a reception hosted by Equal Voice, in celebration of their Experiences mentorship program. Equal Voice is an organization that works in partnership with women in elected positions at all levels of government to encourage women across Canada to become more involved in politics.
Currently only 21% of elected officials in all levels of government in Canada are women. Just 22% of the Members of Parliament in the House of Commons are women. This ranks Canada 49th out of 189 countries, including under several developing countries. The current Federal Ministry has one of the highest proportions of women of any Cabinet, but still only 11 out of 37 (less than half) are women. Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 - 9:09AM
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In 2009 Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney promised significant reforms to Canadian immigration policy before the end of the year. In the last months of 2009, several small changes were introduced, including improvements to the Live-in Caregivers program and better recognition of foreign credentials. We are still awaiting the major changes.
But before the changes are announced, Minister Kenney and the government should consider what Canadians really think about immigration. Read more »
By Chandra Pasma | Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 - 3:45PM
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The Globe and Mail reported today that Canada is facing a jobless recovery, as businesses are not expecting to hire in 2010 and public sector positions are being eliminated.
The article quotes Sébastien Lavoie, assistant chief economist at Laurentian Bank Securities, who predicts that we will see employment restored to its pre-recession level in 2011. Read more »
By Rebekah Sears | Monday, March 8th, 2010 - 4:23PM
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Last week, just before the government’s presentation of Budget 2010, the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB), a project coordinated by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), released their Alternative Federal Budget 2010. Employment issues topped their list of priorities. Employment also topped the priority list of Budget 2010. Let’s see how they compare! Read more »
The recession has had a tremendous impact on Canadians. Job losses and a faltering safety net have added hundreds of thousands of people to the population of Canadians living in poverty. Economic stimulus and deficit spending are most certainly required to confront this vulnerability. Measures to create and sustain jobs and to build a strong and healthy country are needed. But this cannot be done at the expense of those on the margins, excluded from mainstream society. Read more »
The government has refused to produce uncensored documents relating to the question of whether Canada is complicit in the torture of Afghan detainees despite the request of the House of Commons. The government claims that it would compromise national security to do so. But national security is no excuse to avoid accountability: accountability is a core principle of both democracy and public justice. Canadians have a right to know what is being done in our name. Representative democracy is no threat to national security. 
Welcome to the March issue of Ola!, the monthly e-newsletter of Citizens for Public Justice. Spring has come early to the nation’s capital, and as the snow has disappeared, the days have grown longer, and Parliament has resumed after a two month prorogation, there’s a new energy in our work for justice. Join us as we speak out for change and call our governments to live out public justice. 
Poverty continues to be a significant problem within Canada. To address this issue several provinces and municipalities, including Ottawa, have developed poverty reduction strategies. As poverty is most visible at the local level, municipalities must play a role in reduction. However, they cannot succeed alone. The participation of the federal government is crucial in order to set national standards, offer support and direct resources. Action, however, has remained firmly in the domain of municipalities and provinces. When will the federal government step up and take strong action to eliminate poverty in Canada? 
The recession has had a tremendous impact on Canadians. Job losses and a faltering safety net have added hundreds of thousands of people to the population of Canadians living in poverty. Economic stimulus and deficit spending are most certainly required to confront this vulnerability. Measures to create and sustain jobs and to build a strong and healthy country are needed. But this cannot be done at the expense of those on the margins, excluded from mainstream society. 
