Friday: Canada's National Aboriginal Day of Action

And the protests have already begun:

Armed Mohawk protesters barricaded a highway in eastern Ontario Thursday night, vowing to set up even more blockades as a national aboriginal day of action begins at midnight.

About 40 protesters parked a schoolbus on Highway 2, near Deseronto, just before 9 p.m. ET, forcing traffic to stop and turn around at the location, which is about 50 kilometres west of Kingston.

Protest leader Shawn Brant said the blockade is just a "soft target," done in anticipation of major blockades that will be set up somewhere along the high-traffic Highway 401, between Montreal and Toronto.

Protesters also intend to hit the CN Rail line between the two cities, Brant said, not giving exact locations for the blockades, but saying protesters are armed and ready to keep their blockades up until midnight Friday.

"We've made no secret that we have guns within this camp," he told the Canadian Press.
[...]
In anticipation of blockades, Via Rail cancelled all Friday train services between Toronto and Montreal and between Toronto and Ottawa.

One day of inconvenienced rail travelers is nothing compared to what our first nations people have suffered for far too long now.

And if all levels of government have any sense at all, they'll let the protesters make their voices heard peacefully while doing everything they can to avoid another Ipperwash style tragedy.

The Assembly of First Nations chief, Phil Fontaine, has also issued a statement on "potential illegal protests" on Friday.

We respectfully urge Canadians not to criminalize First Nations people with respect to the actions they plan to take on June 29th and beyond. Our people do have a right to protest, as do all Canadians. The Assembly of First Nations has never resorted to illegal activities, or anything beyond the rule of law, to advance the causes of FN people.

We understand the frustration that exists among too many of our people. Our objective in organizing the National Day of Action is to provide a positive channel for that energy. We invite all Canadians to stand with us in support of a better life for First Nations and a stronger country for all Canadians.

In recent weeks, the AFN has met with various police forces, as well as CN and CP Rail, because of our mutual interest in ensuring public safety and security during the various events that will make up the National Day of Action.

Visit this AFN page for more information about the protests and the national events schedule.

The treatment of aboriginal people in Canada is our nation's shame. It's a humanitarian disaster. And when the current conservative minority government decided to scrap the Kelowna Accord, it derailed years of work meant to finally begin to address those issues in a substantial way. Piecemeal policies have never been enough and they certainly are not enough now. Our aboriginal people deserve justice and their third-world living conditions must be dealt with immediately. Please support their day of action in any way you can.
 

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?