The Liberals' Family Planning Vote Fiasco

It should have been a simple thing: present a motion to force the Cons to take a formal stand on supporting maternal health initiatives (ie. contraception) in advance of the upcoming G8 meeting - a reaffirmation of Canada's foreign policy stance for the past 25 years.

But the Liberals, who introduced the motion, managed to defeat their own motion.

This, after catching the Cons in their own roller coaster of confusion over the policy last week and on the heels of Bev Oda laughingly calling the policy "anti-American". (Apparently, being against former and regressive Bush administration policies equals anti-Americanism to the spectacularly dull and ineffective Ms Oda).

And the Cons also believed that even talking about contraception was some sort of slippery slope to re-opening the debate about abortion - which wasn't even on the table.

Yet, the Liberals still managed to embarass themselves.

There were 3 "no" votes from members of their party and a number didn't even show up.

On top of that:

The Liberals' problems were compounded when a handful of members proceeded to get confused about how they were to vote on the next measure and accidentally voted in favour of the supplementary estimates attached to the budget. Once they realized their error, the MPs tried to vote against it. Finally, Speaker Peter Milliken allowed the MPs' nay votes to be counted.

If the upcoming speaker's ruling on the Afghan detainee document issue prompts an election call, as Chantal Herbert speculates, the disorganized Liberals had better hope that their little "thinking conference" to be held this week generates some way to make sure they're all on the same page. Of course, not inviting your own MPs to actually be there in person might make that just a tad difficult since Ignatieff doesn't even appear to want to have his party members in the same room. Maybe they should just hold their future caucus meetings via Twitter.

Update:

Ignatieff: dissenters face 'internal discipline'

I'm sure they'll get a sternly-worded letter...
 

Failing Afghanistan's Children

While Peter MacKay and Bev Oda are busy telling happy war stories in committee today, what they will predictably leave out are real indicators of the failed efforts over the past 6 years in Afghanistan.

As IRIN notes, the focus on military expenditures is basically handing poor, young Afghan men and children to the Taliban:

"In our district many young guys join Taliban ranks for pocket money, a mobile phone or other financial incentives," said Safiullah, a resident of Sangeen District in Helmand.

They don't want much, yet they are being deprived by the mishandling of foreign aid and so-called development funds. And they are willing to risk their very lives to get what they need.

High levels of rural poverty or unemployment are probably helping to drive young people like Malik to join the Taliban.

Due to insecurity in the southern provinces there are no available unemployment figures. However, a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission on the social and economic rights of Afghans estimated that in some parts of the country the unemployment rate was as high as 60 percent.

Another reason why there are so many rural poor is the fact that agriculture, which employs over 60 percent of the estimated 26.6 population, has received only US$300-400 million of the over US$15 billion of international development aid given to Afghanistan since 2002, Oxfam International reported in January.

But, whenever US and Canadian government officials comment about Afghanistan's agricultural problems, their focus is on the issue of opium production, which has skyrocketed. The solution, they claim, is to eradicate the crops and offer legal substitutes to farmers in bed with the warlords and the Taliban. However, when such a minimal amount of foreign aid money is actually directed to such efforts, the farmers are cut off at the knees. They have no choice if they want to survive and feed their families.

US spending in Afghanistan amounts to approximately $65,000 per minute. In Iraq, that number is $250,000. Military spending in both countries far exceeds the amounts required to reach the stated goals of creating and sustaining anything nearing a civil society, while corrupt government institutions and officials also stand in the way of progress for the average Afghan.

So what are the children to do? Especially when they're also victims of domestic abuse who are expected to help out in any way they can - including contributing to the family's income? Obviously, joining the insurgency looks attractive as a quick way to accomplish that responsibility, especially considering that only "32 per cent of boys complete primary school while only 13 per cent of girls do so". (The next time you hear government officials boast about the fact that 6 million children are now attending school, remember those percentages).

And, as far as Canada's so-called contributions are concerned, the Senlis Council was highly critical of CIDA in 2007.

The failure to demonstrably address the extreme poverty, widespread hunger and appalling child and maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan — let alone boost economic development — is decreasing local Afghan support for Canada’s mission and increasing support for the insurgency."

Norine MacDonald, of the Senlis Council, said the problem is a structural issue because the money the agency does have is not ending up on the ground.

"When you're on the ground in Kandahar, it's sad to say, despite good intentions, CIDA's efforts are non-existent," MacDonald said.

"We are confronted every day by people without food, without water, without shelter, without medical aid. So our efforts are so minimal as to be non-existent."

Tuesday's Conservative government budget boasted that aid to Afghanistan would be increased by $100 million but, when you read the fine print, the majority of that money will go towards "security initiatives, such as training police, [and the] army". As Brian Hutchinson wrote in the National Post this week, you'd be hard-pressed to find any CIDA officials on the ground in places like Kandahar. Bev Oda, the minister now responsible for CIDA has come under attack recently by Senator Colin Kenny, who claimed that CIDA had no idea where its' aid money was ending up. CIDA officials countered that they have a solid trail, but note this reality:

"Last year, Canada spent $179 million in aid in Afghanistan, one-third of which flows through multilateral partners like the United Nations and World Food Program, with the remaining two-thirds given to the Afghan government.

The corrupt Afghanistan government:

Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, says the greatest threat to success in Afghanistan is not the resurgence of the Taliban but "the potential irretrievable loss of legitimacy of the government of Afghanistan."
[...]
President Hamid Karzai has admitted there is a problem.

"All politicians in this system have acquired everything – money, lots of money. God knows it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen," Mr. Karzai said in November.

As noted in that article, and according to Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, Afghanistan's government rates as one the most corrupt in the world. Obviously, CIDA's defence that it knows where its' aid money is actually going is specious at best, and blatantly dishonest on its face. So, while Conservatives like MacKay and Oda are once again busy trying to sell this war, going after the hearts and minds of the Canadian people by insisting that they only have the best interests of the Afghan people in mind, the facts state otherwise. And the idea that the Liberal party would support an extension of this failed, misguided and completely mismanaged mission only adds further insult to far too many injuries.

The Afghanistan people need help, but the current NATO-structured mission plan has failed. Just ask the Afghan children who would sacrifice their fate for "pocket money" from the Taliban.
 

Severe Neglect: Women's Rights in Canada

Following on the heels of International Women's Day on Thursday (which I wrote about here - read the accompanying comments as well), I found 3 news stories today that illustrate just how much still needs to be done for women in Canada.

The first:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Canada needs to improve social services for its aboriginal population, particularly native women who face persistent and marked inequalities, a United Nations panel said on Friday.

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found there was a "lack of substantial progress" in addressing discrimination against native communities within the officially multicultural country.
[...]
Stressing that native women make up "a disproportionate number of victims of violent death, rape and domestic violence," it recommended Ottawa improve services, including shelters and counseling, for victims of gender-based violence.

And, here's the predictable response from the Conservative government which, btw, scrapped the Kelowna Accord:

"For 13 years the Liberals paid lip service to aboriginals ... this (report reflects) an accumulation of years and years of blatant disregard for aboriginal issues," said Deirdra McCracken, a spokeswoman for Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.

There is no doubt that previous governments - Conservative and Liberal - severely neglected the plight of aboriginal people in our country however, the Liberals under Paul Martin had finally pledged to commit to change and were supported in Kelowna by First Nations leaders when the Kelowna accord was agreed to. The tories threw that away and decided to come up with their own plan. Where is it?

Secondly:

The Alberta Council of Women's Shelters says more and more abused women are being turned away in the province, a trend being called the dark side of the economic boom.

According to the council, more than 13,000 women and children used shelters in 2006, but another 14,000 had to be turned away because the shelters were full — a 16 per cent increase over the year before.

Meanwhile, Alberta's shelters received nearly 100,000 crisis calls in 2006, a nearly 50 per cent increase over the last two years.
[...]
Also, Alberta has one of the lowest rates of social assistance in Canada, putting abused women at a further disadvantage, she said.

This really isn't new at all. Alberta has always had a lack of shelter spaces for abused women. The Klein government admitted last year that it had made no plans for dealing with another oil boom. As a result, the new (Conservative) Stelmach government is responsible for playing catch up and, trust me, the situation for women here isn't going to change any time soon because the tory governments here have always had only one priority: making money. Spending money on social programs doesn't fit with that agenda.

Thanks to oil revenues, Alberta has a $7 billion surplus. The last I heard a single person on social assistance was alloted $401/month to live on. Rental housing is extremely expensive and the social services infrastructure has always been lacking. Those who can't "make it" in the boom are simply tossed aside. It's survival of the richest - always has been here and always will be.

Thirdly, and directly related to the first two stories:

OTTAWA–Politicians and advocacy groups lined up on International Women's Day to blast Conservative cabinet minister Bev Oda for cuts and mandate changes at Status of Women Canada.

Oda's constituency office in Bowmanville was occupied for several hours yesterday by members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada protesting the moves.

A day earlier, Oda had announced a $5 million increase in grants the agency distributes for women's projects. The money amounts to a redirection of a $5 million cut to Status of Women's administrative budget last September, resulting in the closing of 12 of 16 regional offices on April 1.

The government has also changed the criteria for what projects receive funding. Advocacy and research projects will no longer be eligible for grants, in favour of groups providing direct services to women.

And perhaps most controversially, the word equality has been removed from literature related to the agency.
[...]
Paulette Senior, chief executive officer of YWCA Canada, said her organization has been doing both service delivery and research/advocacy work for decades. She pointed to the organization's major study on women's shelters, conducted with the help of Status of Women funding, as an example of how research can help make services more effective.

The third phase of that study, on how to implement the findings, will likely not be funded under the new guidelines.

"All these things are inextricably linked," Senior said in an interview. "How do we know the services we're providing are effective if we don't do any research?"

Exactly. Women in need are being undermined by the very federal minister charged with looking after our interests. There is nothing more illustrative of that fact than the scrubbing of the word "equality" from the government's website - as if the idea of equality is nothing but a quaint relic from the past that has no relevance to the situations women find themselves in today in this country. Of all of the proverbial slaps in the face to women in this country, that one stung and bled while women were sent the message that the abuse of our rights will continue under this tory regime. Why is the equality of women such a threat to these Conservatives? Perhaps the answer is to be found in their very moniker: conservative.

There is no doubt that societal and governmental policy changes take time. There is absolutely no excuse however for the fact that women's rights have not progressed more swiftly in our country. We are a wealthy country with progressive social values overall - no matter how much the regressive conservatives among us would prefer to reverse that fact - yet we cannot even provide the most basic security, prosperity and equality rights to over half of our population. And I don't even need to mention how that impacts the children of this country as well. That's been well-documented.

Why are we stil being held back from achieving our full potential in society? And why are so many people - male and female - afraid to allow that to happen?

And last, but certainly not least, what can we do about it?