Full Disclosure: Bob Jonkman, the 2019 Green Party of Canada Candidate for Brantford–Brant is my husband.
I fully support Bob’s campaign (which is why my own projects are languishing until this election is over) because I believe we need Bob in Parliament.
I can tell you Bob is perhaps the smartest most ethical man I’ve ever known. If Bob is elected, I believe we will get electoral reform to Proportional Representation. This is so important because it will make it possible for Canada to begin to actually solve our problems, rather than dance political rings around them as the big parties do. We need to restore and improve our universal healthcare (and reverse the privatization!). We need a government that understands the importance of transparent governance and personal privacy. A government that understands modern technology. And a government that will restore and honour our Charter Rights. We all need votes that count. And most important: we need to get to work on Climate Change now. Canada can be a climate leader but to be that we need to elect the right politicians.
This is why I think it’s so important to elect Bob.
So I will be posting more about Bob through the remaining days of the election.
If you want to see real change in Ottawa, if you want fair voting and real Climate Action that doesn’t include additional fossil fuel pipelines and Fracking, if you want human equity and actual reconciliation, if you live in Brantford–Brant, please consider casting your vote for Bob. If you’re a Canadian who doesn’t live in Brantford–Brant you can still support Bob with a donation here: https://bobjonkman.ca/donate/
And don’t forget to check out the candidates in your riding and vote for what you want!
This is a very different election than we are accustomed to. Although 2019 is not going to be our first federal election under Proportional Representation as indicated by the #ERRE committee, because it is shaping up to be a minority government, if we elect enough Green MPs, it could actually be the last election under First Past The Post if Canadians vote for what we want.
As your Green Party MP, Bob will represent Brantford–Brant in Parliament. He won’t just deliver his party’s edicts to the riding.
One Green MP can make a real difference; with enough Green MPs sitting in Parliament, Canada will take real climate action.
BBQ with local organic beef burgs and beyond meat burgs, potato salad, and some munchies. And of course, the full Steel Wheel selection of local craft brew to go with it! Enjoyable evening of local food, good fun, and generous fundraising.
This is also a fundraiser for the Bob Jonkman federal election campaign!
But one of the two founders of north99wrote an angry Facebook post denying misleading anyone, insisting CBC had made a mistake
“This morning CBC published a misleading and factually incorrect piece about North99. We have already filed an official complaint with the CBC and asked for a correction to be issued. If you’ve read the piece and are wondering what’s true and what’s not, here’s the facts: people sign up to our email list through issue campaigns, surveys, petitions, and our newsletter. We always make it clear up front what issue or campaign people are joining when they sign up.
The CBC claimed we were not being clear with people about this, and that we were signing them up for campaigns they didn’t want to be a part of. Let me be clear: this is 100% untrue. It’s as untrue as saying the sky is green. Their so-called “analysis” of the forms on our website was wrong, and this led them to report a falsehood. That’s unfortunate, and we hope they will correct this embrassing error. Canadians deserve the unvarnished truth from our public broadcaster.
But you know who doesn’t give a damn about the truth? The Conservatives. And they have already seized on the mistakes made by the CBC to attack us and the North99 community. This morning Lisa Raitt — a former Harper Cabinet Minister and the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party — took to Twitter to attack North99. She made wild allegations about us — the sort of stuff you’d expect from The Rebel, not someone trying to lead the country.
Look, none of this is surprising. Our community is disrupting politics in this country, and we have to expect the forces of the right and the status-quo to come after us with everyone they’ve got. Now that we are growing in size and our community is having an impact, people are going to try to tear us down. Lisa Raitt won’t be the last politician to smear and slander us. They hate what we stand for. But you know what: we aren’t going to back down from a fight.
Here’s my commitment to you: 1) We take your trust seriously, and we take accuracy seriously. We won’t always be perfect, and sometimes — like the CBC! — we’ll make mistakes. But we’ll always correct them and be honest with you. 2) We will never stop fighting for a Canada that works for the many, not just the richest few — even when we’re attacked by powerful politicians like Lisa Raitt. As long as you’re with us, we’ll keep on working.
Perhaps most interesting is how deftly Mr Scollon this message of righteous indignation was transformed into a Conservative attack piece.
While I don’t know the truth of the misleading petition allegation, it is nonetheless clear that the two gentlemen who are behind North99 are indeed Liberals.
But are they operating with the blessing of theLiberal Party of Canada or are they acting alone in support of it. Presumably North 99 is a third party advertiser in this, the new “Pre-Election Period” devised by the latter, else they’ll fall afoul of the LPC’s own new law which lays down rules about third party advertisers and possible collusion with political parties.
“While it shouldn’t be surprising that online partisan front groups stir the pot, what is remarkable is how effective they have been with so little accountability. All of these groups are scooping up massive amounts of data, often directly collecting information through their own cynical petitions on hot issues. These groups show how empty much of the political landscape has become. Digital media strategists are running a shell game that treats ordinary working people as something to be manipulated and toyed with. Forget about all that nonsense about Russians on distorting democracy through social media. We need to look no further than the communication specialists and political parties in this country to see who the true manipulators are.”
Whoever WRONG KIND OF GREEN is, I share their concern about who is driving our politics. Both North99 and Ontario Proud are working to build an us against them political culture that polarizes Canadians, and certainly seems to impose undue influence on our electoral process by demonizing the other side’s politicians.
This is, of course, why we still have the atrocious First Past The Post voting system. Attacking the enemy is a time honoured strategy that often leads to winning elections and becoming the winner who takes all in our majoritan political system.
The Liberals and Conservatives take turns getting elected by convincing their base and any swing voters they can woo that only they will save us from the other.
The Canadian federal government’s announcement reapproving the Trans Mountain Pipeline is inconsistent with the government’s declaration of a climate emergency the day before. This will likely lead to more legal challenges and protests that will continue to delay and block the controversial project, said international environmental organization Stand.earth.
“Approving the Trans Mountain Pipeline is inconsistent with our government’s declaration of a climate emergency. Oil and gas emissions are the largest and fastest growing component of Canada’s emissions. If we are going to fight climate change in Canada, we need to face the fact that we can no longer expand fossil fuel production and infrastructure. Canada’s oil is high cost and high carbon, and it is struggling to compete in a global market. Investing pipeline profits into clean energy? How about you just put the $10 billion directly into clean energy, instead of wasting taxpayer money on this risky investment?” said Tzeporah Berman, International Program Director at Stand.earth. “We stand by city leaders, the B.C. government, and First Nations who oppose this project, and we call on organizations and individuals around the world to stand with us.”
“No matter who forms the next government in Ottawa, the Trans Mountain Pipeline will never be built,” said said Sven Biggs, Climate and Energy Campaigner at Stand.earth. “People care deeply about protecting the BC coast, and British Columbians remain opposed to this pipeline and the risks of a devastating oil spill that come with it. Whenever construction resumes, another wave of protests is guaranteed in British Columbia.”
Pipeline opposition
Opposition to the pipeline remains strong, with tens of thousands of people pledging to stop the pipeline and multiple cities, municipalities, and the province of B.C. also stating opposition.
People power: Nearly 27,000 people have pledged to do “whatever it takes” to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Number of arrests: From March through August 2018, around 230 people with Protect the Inlet and other environmental groups were arrested for violating a court-ordered injunction while demonstrating against the pipeline. More than 30 people have served jail time after receiving sentences in BC Supreme Court.
Construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and the likelihood of a spill associated with the project poses significant risks to the climate, the public safety of the communities it passes through, the economy, and the critically endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales.
Climate change: If built, the Trans Mountain Pipeline would expand the production of Canada’s oil sands, and the increase in emissions would be the equivalent of putting 2.2 million cars on the road. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report in late 2018 showing that Canada has just 12 years to reduce its climate emissions by 40%. Meeting those climate objectives is simply not possible if Canada continues to build new fossil fuel infrastructure like the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Spill risk: If the Trans Mountain Pipeline is built, it will lead to a 700% increase in oil tanker traffic in the Salish Sea, with the likelihood of an oil spill in the 50-year lifespan of the project as high as 79-87%. A major oil spill would expose the entire Vancouver population to human health risks due to inhalation of toxic chemicals.
Public safety: A potential tank fire at the Burnaby Mountain Terminal poses a significant risk to nearby high-density neighborhoods, elementary schools, and Simon Fraser University. Proposed increased storage capacity could cause multiple tanks to ignite during a fire.
Tar sands markets:Economists have questioned Trudeau’s claims that the pipeline would help Canada reach new markets in Asia, instead of simply expanding into existing U.S. markets in California and Washington, where opposition to the pipeline is heating up. Last week in California, the Protect the Bay coalition launched to oppose an increase in tar sands tankers in the Bay Area. In May, the California Assembly threw its support behind AB 936, a proactive measure to protect California’s critical marine and freshwater resources from harms caused by a spill of non-floating oils like tar sands, which if passed, would join similar legislation in Washington state on non-floating oils. In Washington, the King County Safe Energy Leadership Alliance sent a letter to the Department of Ecology to strengthen oil spill response requirements for dilbit, specifically calling out the Trans Mountain Pipeline. The letter includes signatories from multiple city mayors, city and county councilmembers, and state senators.
Lorelei Williams, whose cousin was murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton and whose aunt went missing in 1978, sheds tears while responding to the report on the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. | THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
As a sociologist, I’m not interested in adjudicating this case according to an official legal definition of genocide. Rigid legal concepts can interfere with understanding the social nature of group destruction. It can flatten the analysis of group relations. It can serve as a hammer to pound a complicated history into a singular event.
Two women embrace during ceremonies marking the release of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report in Gatineau on June 3, 2019. | THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
One genocide is never the same as another, and therefore a static law or a fixed concept of genocide is of little use to protect us from its horrors. Understanding genocide as a process can help Canadians grapple with the ongoing threat faced by Indigenous peoples in Canada and Indigenous women and girls as outlined in the final MMIWG report.
Legal professionals over time have had to adjust their reading of genocide law. Since the Second World War, contesting ideas and debate have brought about changes to how legal scholars and courts interpret genocide. The authors of the genocide supplement for the MMIWG report draw upon these interpretations but also pose new challenges to the laws of genocide.
These questions are necessary because the history of settler colonialism in Canada includes a variety of efforts to remove, assimilate, starve and erase Indigenous nations. When one approach failed, the settler colonial mesh recalibrated.
For example, residential schools mutated into child removals and mass incarceration. Moreover, the strands of the mesh continue to entrap and strangle communities long after the supposed end of any one manifestation of group destruction.
This is the destruction to which the report draws our attention.
Colonial and masculine assumptions are evident in genocide law, as is the political will of the drafting parties to protect their own nations from accusations of genocide, hence the withdrawal of Article III from the final document.
Despite these beginnings, the law develops as people engage with it, and genocide case law has gradually addressed some of the limitations of the UNGC.
For example, through decisions from bodies such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the groups protected from genocide have been expanded beyond narrow understandings of ethnicity, nationhood, religion and race.
The MMIWG final report seeks to bring a grassroots, gendered and Indigenous reading of these laws to the discussion of MMIWG and how Canada’s actions and omissions contributed to their deaths.
This is a valuable contribution and pushes the boundaries of the definition of genocide. Thinking on this topic always needs to be pushed.
Genocide is a transgressive act. It overturns all expectations, violates social norms and continuously mutates to take on new and surprising forms. Different readings and interpretations of genocide are needed to truly confront the many evolving methods of group destruction.
British Columbia Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Training Melanie Mark, B.C.‘s first female First Nations MLA, and her daughter Makayla, 8, listen as Indigenous women and allies respond to the report on the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, in Vancouver, June 3, 2019. | THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Residential schools can be seen as situated within a series of nets that operated on all levels in society, including at the upper echelons of society among elite social influencers, and also through government and missionary institutions as well as individual teachers, principals and communities. There was a complex coordination of activities, habits, ideologies, motives and intents that were generally directed toward eliminating Indigenous peoples as distinct peoples.
These layers of destructive action can be likened to a settler colonial mesh constructed to entrap Indigenous peoples within an assimilative project. But the mesh is prone to snags and tears allowing for the emergence of resistance and subversion. Indigenous people were not passive; parents refused to send their children, children ran away and communities sometimes preserved their cultures when conditions allowed.
Impact on group destruction
The MMIWG report is about the results of such processes and their effects on community and family relationships: harmful relations established through settler colonialism, their impact on intimate and everyday group relations and the possibility of better relations in the future.
It demands more of genocide law, and more from Canadian society, to address the intersecting settler colonial and hetero-patriarchal wrongs that have led to the injustice of MMIWG.
Rather than staunchly defend a narrow conception of genocide, it is time to demand this concept to do what it was intended to do: enable human thriving through respectful collective relations.
Carol Eugene Park: ‘The Time for Talk Is Over’: Survivors React to the Missing Women’s Inquiry. Systemic colonial violence creates genocide against Indigenous Peoples, says final report. he hundreds of recommendations for Canadian society and government by the National Inquiry of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are in response to what is properly called genocide, said a First Nations lawyer at a press conference in Vancouver Monday.
The inquiry report’s use of the term genocide to describe what it called systematic race- and gender-based violence against Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people was hotly debated on social media since the report’s leak on Friday.
But Sharon McIvor, Nlaka’pamux from the Lower Nicola Indian Band and an activist, lawyer and college professor said, “It was good to acknowledge that what’s been happening for the last 200 years is genocide.”
McIvor said Canada must acknowledge its role in creating and perpetuating the colonial structures that have led to the high murder rates Indigenous women and girls have and continue to face.
“They have a huge role to play to put us where we are, and they have a role to play to get us back from where we are,” McIvor said. “I call on the government to take [the report] seriously and tomorrow make me equal to my male counterparts in law.”
The inquiry’s report, released Monday, is 1,200 pages long and contains 231 recommendations the inquiry says will end violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
The recommendations include calls for action on human rights, policing, the justice system, corrections, health care, education, media, social work and child welfare.
“He gave us this national inquiry of MMIWG,” Williams said. “However, he approved the pipelines to go into Mother Earth, raping her and creating more places for women to go missing and be murdered along these pipelines? It is a known fact that our Indigenous women and girls go missing and are murdered along these pipelines.”
Williams said Trudeau does not represent Indigenous peoples in Canada, or the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. “We are the original nations of Turtle Island,” she said.
The introduction to the inquiry’s report reads, “The fact that this National Inquiry is happening now doesn’t mean that Indigenous peoples waited this long to speak up; it means it took this long for Canada to listen.”
But that statement falls short for Summer-Rain Bentham, manager at Battered Women’s Support Services.
“Listening is not action,” she said. “Listening does not stop men from being able to target and harm Indigenous women and girls, trans, and two-spirit with near impunity.”
Bentham said the ongoing disappearance and murder of women and girls since the inquiry’s start three years ago is evidence that Canada is ignoring the genocide against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
Implementing the calls to justice are the first steps Canada can take to show that “Indigenous women and girls are valuable, sacred,” Bentham said.
“Our sisters and two-spirit relatives who have been missing or murdered — they paid with their lives for this movement. They gave their lives so that we would be able to fight for the safety of other Indigenous women and girls and two-spirit folks…. We have a responsibility to them.”
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, was the final speaker to respond to the National Inquiry of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
He said real change must be fought for, and Canada’s genocidal history described in the report must be acknowledged.
“It’s our responsibility to hold all governments at all levels to account, to ensure that the recommendations of this report do not gather dust on some bureaucratic shelf in Ottawa like the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,” he said.
Phillip criticized Trudeau for what he said were his lack of concrete solutions to Canada’s genocidal history and present.
“We can’t allow Prime Minister Trudeau to prance in here and offer good intentions,” Phillip said. “We need action. Enough talk, enough consultation. The time for talk is over, now is the time for action. It’s our responsibility to ensure that happens.”
Courtney Skye
is Mohawk, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.
She is a research fellow at Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-led
policy think tank at the Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University.
This
week, family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls
and Two-Spirit people, survivors of violence, community activists and
Indigenous leaders gathered in Ottawa for the release of “Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.”
They were there to acknowledge the inquiry’s work in a collective
ceremony to honor the lives of those who have experienced violence. It
was an demonstration of the love that exists within Indigenous
communities for Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people — and a recognition of the overwhelming levels of violence they have had to endure for generations.
The report,
released Monday, finds that “persistent and deliberate human and
Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind
Canada’s staggering rates of violence.” The inquiry concluded that
Canada has committed a genocide against the Indigenous peoples within
its colonial borders, and is continuing to maintain systems and
structures that result in Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people
experiencing a disproportionate amount of violence.
Even
with a two-year mandate, the inquiry was unable to determine a
definitive number of Indigenous people who are missing or have been
murdered. But Indigenous women were reported to be at least six times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous women.
The new report, which consists of more than 1,200 pages, contains hundreds of calls for justice
that methodically address the interrelated ways Canadian and Indigenous
structures, programs and services must change to promote the
substantive equality of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people.
These calls include establishing a “National Indigenous and Human Rights
Ombudsperson” and a “National Indigenous Human Rights Tribunal,”
developing and implementing a national action plan, and providing
long-term funding for educational programs and violence prevention
campaigns.
The report affirms what Indigenous
people have long understood — that the violence they experience is a
product of settler colonialism. The continuation of the Canadian settler
state requires the destabilization of Indigenous communities — and a
part of this stabilization has involved rampant gender-based violence to
uphold the legitimacy of the settler state’s rule over land and water.
While
settler colonialism impacts Indigenous peoples of all genders, it makes
women, girls and Two-Spirit people especially vulnerable to violence.
In 1924, the Canadian state imposed a government structure within First
Nations communities, removing their traditional leadership. And since 1876, Canada has enforced the Indian Act, which at times forced “Indian” women out of leadership positions
and removed their legal status if they chose to go to university or
marry a non-Indigenous person, or if their fathers chose to enfranchise
them. The sex-based discrimination in the Indian Act is identified as
one of the root causes of violence toward First Nations women in the
report.
Over time, advancements in the rights of Indigenous peoples have resulted in Supreme Court challenges and findings of discrimination
from international bodies. However, Canada has maintained a state
definition of “Status Indians,” defining membership in communities from
outside the norms and traditions of those people, and has yet to fully
eliminate how these structures perpetuate sex-based discrimination.
The
national inquiry report outlines in great detail how the nature of
settler colonialism in Canada has evolved into an insidious and
distinctly Canadian social reality that ignores reports of brutal
murders and missing persons, even as these numbers reached alarming
levels.
The United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples sets a minimum standard for the recognition
of their collective rights and sees improvement in the lives of
Indigenous peoples as contingent upon their ability to exercise
self-determination. Now, the inquiry’s report makes clear that
responding to the calls for justice and undertaking actions to end
violence require restoring Indigenous jurisdiction in ways that
prioritize the safety of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people.
For
too long, our communities have feared that shedding light on violence
would undermine Indigenous leadership. Communities have viewed crises as
something that must remain hidden in order for Indigenous structures to
be restored, and enduring the violence we experience has been seen as
the cost of nation-building.
The inquiry has
established that violence in Indigenous communities and the ongoing
refusal to recognize Indigenous-led ways of governance reinforce one
another, to the benefit of the settler state. Immediate action on the
calls for justice is needed in order to protect Indigenous women, girls
and Two-Spirit people. We must be able to not only express our
aspirations openly but also confront our challenges and seek our own
solutions to the issues we face, including gender-based violence. As
Indigenous communities continue to assert their sovereignty, the role of
the paternalistic settler state must be limited and clearly defined.
The
release of the final report marks a pivotal moment in the recognition
and advancement of the individual and collective rights of Indigenous
people. As Indigenous people continue to overcome the violence and
trauma instilled in their communities by a settler state, the inquiry insists
“the exclusion of Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA people, Elders,
and children from the exercise of Indigenous self-determination must
end.” Honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and
Two-Spirit people requires it.
