Posts Tagged ‘rights’

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The real challenge is to expand medicare, not just save it

Sunday, September 13th, 2020

While Canadians sing the praises of public care, they actually spend close to a third of their health-care dollars in the private sector — on things like prescription drugs, dental care, vision care, physiotherapy and home care… The job now isn’t just to protect medicare as it is against efforts to chip away at it, but to extend public coverage into other areas. A comprehensive pharmacare program should top the list

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The landmark Charter challenge over private health-care wasn’t about what you thought it was

Sunday, September 13th, 2020

the heart of the plaintiffs’ argument… If governments are to impose a monopoly over the funding of health care, they have an obligation to see that it is provided in a timely fashion… User fees and private insurance may not be the answer to wait times, but it is not impossible that the system could be reformed in such a way as to make more efficient use of resources, without harm to the principle of universal public funding.

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Our recovery must be just and equitable for all

Monday, September 7th, 2020

… six principles for a just recovery: Put people’s health and well-being first, with no exceptions; Strengthen the social safety net and provide relief directly to people; Prioritize the needs of workers and communities; Build resilience to prevent future crises; Build solidarity and equity across communities, generations and borders; Uphold Indigenous rights and work in partnership with Indigenous peoples

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Ontario and Ottawa keep failing on reforms to solitary confinement

Saturday, August 29th, 2020

The debilitating effects of solitary confinement on prisoners’ mental health are well known. There’s a reason the UN defines stints in solitary beyond 15 days as torture. It should be used only as a last resort and not, as it so often is, to put a troubled inmate out of sight and out of mind, or as a way to maintain security in the face of under-staffing or lack of appropriate mental health care inside institutions.

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Canada needs to walk the talk on migrant rights

Thursday, August 27th, 2020

Migration, and specifically the impact of COVID-19 on migrant workers, is a global story as much as it is a national one… What we do at home affects how we are seen elsewhere… By truly improving migration standards at home and acting on the international commitments it has made to protect the most vulnerable, Canada will build healthier communities and stronger economies – at home and abroad.

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For Canada to truly recover economically, we need new thinking around access to justice

Wednesday, August 19th, 2020

… while legal aid organizations across the country play a crucial role in access to justice, there is so much more that can be done. The expansion of specialized courts such as drug courts, mental health courts, Indigenous courts and so on provide off-ramps for those for whom traditional justice measures are costly and wouldn’t be effective.

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We must go back and fetch our forgotten Black history

Friday, July 31st, 2020

Canada’s strategically crafted narrative has created a framework within which racial inequities have simultaneously been upheld and delegitimized through the erasure of Black experiences. It’s actually quite ingenious. If we can’t identify the roots of our systems of oppression, we will never dismantle them. If we don’t recognize the whole of our history, we will never learn from it.

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After court ruling, Ottawa should suspend refugee agreement with U.S.

Monday, July 27th, 2020

Canada can no longer outsource decisions on who deserves asylum to an American system that is far from safe… “the accounts of the detainees (in the U.S.) demonstrate both physical and psychological suffering because of detention, and a real risk that they will not be able to assert asylum claims.” … as the Safe Third Country Agreement… applies only at official ports of entry, many thousands of would-be refugees crossed on foot at other points, flooding Canada’s refugee system.

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Genetic Non-Discrimination Act upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada

Thursday, July 23rd, 2020

A majority at the SCC found that genetic privacy is part of core biographical information and as such, its protection is a valid criminal law objective… that individuals have legitimate privacy, autonomy and dignity interests in their own genetic information. They held that forcing people to undergo genetic testing and to face the results is a clear threat to these values; that genetic identity is at the heart of a biographical core of information and its protection is warranted.

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Canadian court says Safe Third Country Agreement with U.S. violates charter

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2020

“The ‘sharing of responsibility’ objective of the STCA should entail some guarantee of access to a fair refugee process.” The court said the fact that STCA returnees are jailed by U.S. authorities, does not immunize the actions of Canadian officials from consideration… critics have long argued that the U.S. asylum system is cruel and inhumane, especially under the Trump administration.

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