Archive for the ‘Equality Delivery System’ Category
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It’s tougher than ever to enforce your human rights in Ontario
Thursday, May 10th, 2012
May 09 2012
Six years ago, to speed up a slow, backlogged system that needed reform, Bill 107 privatized human rights enforcement. It took the Human Rights Commission out of screening, investigating and prosecuting individual discrimination cases. It makes discrimination victims investigate and litigate their cases at the tribunal without the commission’s help. Does Bill 107 make lives better for victims of discrimination? Far from it… We hope this current Human Rights Code Review will recognize these amply-documented problems, and make strong recommendations to improve Ontario’s troubled human rights system.
Tags: crime prevention, disabilities, featured, rights, standard of living
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Few people stay poor
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
Apr 30, 2012
Over the period 2002 to 2007, which is the latest available data, 80% of Canadians did not experience low income, defined as falling below Statistics Canada’s low-income cutoff. Roughly 8% experienced low income for one of the six years covered in the period. Only 2.1% of Canadians experienced low income for each of the six years… Canada is a mobile society characterized by both increases and decreases in income that are largely connected with natural changes in one’s life. Thankfully, the data have consistently shown an upward path for incomes and increasing opportunity for workers.
Tags: economy, poverty, standard of living
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Taking on the Feds for Aboriginal Equality
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
20 Apr 2012
Ten years ago she led FNCFCS on a mission to work with the government of Canada to bring equality to all Aboriginal people. But after five years of government rejecting proposal after proposal for fair education, safe housing and clean drinking water on reserves, FNCFCS took them to court. On April 18, FNCFCS won their case in Federal Court, and will head back to the Canada Human Rights Tribunal for another hearing.
Tags: Indigenous, rights, standard of living
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Harper’s disregard for aboriginal health
Saturday, April 14th, 2012
Apr. 09, 2012
The abysmal health status of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples is Canada’s greatest shame… There’s a disturbing pattern here. The government has also cut funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. And the First Nations and Inuit Health branch at Health Canada oversees what is without question the worst health system in Canada, making every effort to slough the responsibility off onto the provinces and territories… “The Conservatives want out of the aboriginal business.”
Tags: budget, Health, Indigenous, rights, standard of living
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The wrong answer to aboriginal overincarceration
Friday, April 6th, 2012
Apr. 05, 2012
Handing young aboriginal men and women a stay-out-of-jail card in cases of serious violence is a mistaken answer to the problem of overincarceration of aboriginal people in Canada. It puts one wrong in place of another… There is no doubt that the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in provincial and federal jails is a calamity for the country, for aboriginals and for the individuals behind bars… In the Louie case, having an aboriginal mother protected him from being held fully accountable for committing a violent crime.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, Indigenous
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It still comes down to fixing the reserves
Sunday, March 25th, 2012
Mar. 14, 2012
Systems and structures are fine and necessary, as is proper funding. But… results from formal education have more to do with parental attitudes, cultural assumptions about the importance of education and community norms than anything else. Which means that aboriginal education can’t be divorced from its core contextual problem – the reserves themselves that the panel correctly notes display socio-economic and health inequities, poverty, suicides, youth incarceration and abuse, high teen pregnancy rates, lower life expectancy and chronic disease.
Tags: budget, Indigenous, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System, Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Native education must be funded equally with public schools
Friday, March 23rd, 2012
Mar 01 2012
… to actually improve the situation the upcoming federal budget needs to include new, dedicated funding. Right now, Ottawa provides thousands of dollars less per student than provinces spend to educate non-native kids. Fewer than 40 per cent of native students – half the rate for non-natives – graduate from high school. It’s a tragedy for them and a terrible waste of potential for the country.
Tags: budget, Indigenous, participation, standard of living
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Conservatives set to back motion to end aboriginal education funding gap, fulfilling Shannen’s Dream
Monday, February 27th, 2012
Feb. 27, 2012
Charlie Angus, the New Democrat whose motion goes to a vote Monday, says the government is “running out of road” on the question of aboriginal education. The Timmins-James Bay MP worked with a young girl from Attawapiskat, Shannen Koostachin, whose fight for proper schools in her community became one of the largest youth-driven civil rights campaign the country had ever seen.
Tags: budget, Indigenous, participation, rights, standard of living, youth
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Mentally ill win right to challenge their lawyer’s performance
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Feb 21 2012
While effective legal assistance is seen as crucial at a criminal trial, where an accused person’s freedom is at stake, it is no less serious in the mental health context, where treatment decisions affecting a person’s liberty, dignity and right to self-determination are also at issue, said Justice Eleanore Cronk, writing for the appeal court… Without “the availability of effective assistance of counsel who is prepared to undertake fearless advocacy for the allegedly incapable patient at the board capacity hearing, the right of self-determination in respect of medical treatment becomes illusory,” she said.
Tags: disabilities, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | 2 Comments »
Supreme Court ruling gives Canadians with mental disabilities full equality in court
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Feb 14 2012
The law is finally fair. In a landmark judgment last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Canadians with mental disabilities have the same right to testify in court as everyone else… It also said adults with mental disabilities should be subjected to no higher test of truthfulness than any other witness: Can they tell their story coherently and do they swear to tell the truth?
Tags: disabilities, mental Health, rights
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