The Dominion - Kaley Kennedy

More Prisons, Higher Profits

Miles — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:51:02 +0000

Inmates have little power in challenging prison work conditions

HALIFAX—Criticism of cheap prison labour is something often aimed at privately owned U.S. super jails, but here in Canada, thousands of imprisoned people form a labour pool where wages dip below a dollar an hour.

“Motivated workers. ISO-certified plants. Flexible contracts. Your partnership with CORCAN will build your business and boost your productivity,” reads a pitch from CORCAN—a branch of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) that coordinates inmate work programs in over 50 shops in manufacturing, textile production, industrial laundry, and other industries.

Every year, about 4,800 inmates across the country participate in CORCAN work programs. Inmates are paid a maximum of $6.90 per day, have no vacation time or vacation pay and need clearance from a health professional to take a sick day. Overtime pay is just over $1 per hour and inmates are required to hand over 25 per cent of any earnings over $69 biweekly for room and board.

Prison wages have not increased in about 25 years; however, according to a 2008 report from Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator, the cost of the average basket of canteen goods inmates require has increased from $8.49 to over $60. In the 2008-09 fiscal year, inmates worked about 2.8 million hours collectively.

CORCAN sells most of its goods and services to government departments such as CSC and the Department of National Defence. In 2008-09, CORCAN had about $70 million in sales, with $10 million of those sales to the private sector. If the 4,800 inmates who worked in CORCAN shops were paid at the top rate of $6.90 per day, CORCAN would have spent just $2.4 million paying prisoners—3.45 per cent of its total sales.

In March of last year, inmates at Mountain Institution in Agassiz, BC, announced that they were attempting to organize an inmate labour union in order to improve working conditions for prisoners. It is unclear what the current status of the inmate union is, but prisoner worker action has been reported at prisons across Canada and the US over the past year, including work stoppages and hunger strikes.

"Prisoners are tremendously resourceful organizers, despite the huge barriers they face [such as] censorship, isolation, lack of funds, [and] retribution by staff/administration," says Sara Falconer, a prisoner justice activist involved with the prisoner-edited zine, Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar.

In some cases, inmates have also been able to turn to the courts to access the rights and freedoms they have been denied. In the 1993 case Sauve v. Canada, the courts struck down laws that stripped prisoners of the right to vote. Prisoners have also argued, with some success, for the right to legal counsel in disciplinary hearings and fought arbitrary transfers and disciplinary measures such as segregation.

“Imprisonment and engagement with the criminal justice system correlates to poverty and other forms of social disadvantage, and even if it doesn’t, it is still a group of people that has human rights. It is still important that our society is held accountable for how it treats them,” says Dr. Debra Parkes, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Manitoba who has written substantially on prisoner rights and why it is important prisoners have access to the courts.

“Groups [such as prisoners] that don’t always have access to the political process and to making change through that need some avenue to address [the] rights abuses that often happen when you have a majority making rules and laws [that] affect the unpopular minority,” she adds.

When it comes to labour issues though, significant barriers prevent prisoners from using the courts to challenge working conditions. Unlike rights granted under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that are intended to apply to all people, inmates are excluded from the statutes and regulations that define labour laws.

“These challenges would face uphill battles in the courts,” says Parkes, “especially because in other instances, the courts have ruled that full collective bargaining protection and labour rights do not need to be extended in every case to all people.”

A lack of labour rights for prisoners leaves inmates susceptible to exploitation in the face of prison expansion. According to Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, CSC will require at least an additional $3.5 billion in funding in order to address the increases in inmates due to the Truth in Sentencing Act, which limits the credit a judge can give an inmate for time served before sentencing. Page estimates that the Federal government would need to build two low-security facilities with 250 cells each, six medium-security facilities with 600 cells each, four high-security facilities with 400 cells each, and one multi-level-security facility with 400 cells each. Bill C-10, known commonly as the omnibus crime bill, will further drive prison expansion through the use of mandatory, minimum sentences and increases in the number of criminal offences.

Prison expansion also allows for a larger inmate workforce.

Prisoners are assigned to work programs in their correctional plans. A correctional plan is an outline of a program that determines the work, training, and activity for an inmate’s sentence. Inmates have little ability to refuse to work, even in poor conditions, because an inmate’s adherence to their correction plan influences decisions on inmate privileges and parole.

While its mandate is said to be centred on work programs that work for prisoners, decisions ultimately come down to dollar figures. In 2009, CORCAN announced it would be closing six prison farms across the country because the farms had been losing money. CORCAN's 2008-09 annual report states that farms had lost $4.1 million that year. Prison farm supporters, including prisoners, correction workers, prisoner justice activists and community members cited the role of the farms in providing local, fresh food to prisons, and in providing meaningful work for prisoners.

Closures were complete in 2011, despite opposition.

For Falconer, prisoner solidarity like that demonstrated around the closure of prison farms will be essential to successful prisoner resistance.

"There have been some inspirational groups over the years...but this kind of organizing can’t really take off without outside support—otherwise it’s easily silenced by the prison administration," says Falconer. “Outside labour unions also have good cause to support prisoners in these struggles—in Wisconsin and elsewhere, union workers have been replaced by prisoners.

"We need to raise prisoners' voices in our everyday lives and movements—from labour unions to schools to community groups to families," she says. "Those of us on the outside have the resources and relative freedom to spread the word about the conditions prisoners are facing and what actions they want us to take."

Kaley Kennedy is a journalist and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Prison labour Canada

Canadian Media Failed to Deliver

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Media coverage of Canada Post labour dispute uncritical, Inaccurate

By June 14, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) had been staging rotating strikes for 11 days. Workers had decided they would slow down the delivery of mail by striking in different communities for two to three days at a time. Workers in Winnipeg, Hamilton, Fredericton, Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Cape Breton, and more, had all taken their turns on the picket line.

So while CUPW members in Toronto and Montreal were walking the picket line on June 14, workers in every other community in Canada showed up to work as usual. Letter carriers — Canada Post workers who deliver mail in our communities every Monday through Friday — were told there was no work for them. No mail was being delivered that Tuesday. So mail sat in Canada Post processing plants; undelivered.

Indoor workers in Halifax, who process and sort the mail, were working — but no mail would leave the plant. Even priority packages, which should be delivered by noon the day after they are shipped, were not delivered.

In Fredericton, management sent indoor workers home after only three hours of work, even with mail still to process, according to a twitter update from activist Ella Henry. Fredericton workers had just come off a strike rotation, so the claim from Canada Post that there was no work for both indoor workers and letter carriers seemed quite perplexing.

Despite these circumstances, the local hourly CBC radio broadcast in Halifax told listeners all day that Canada Post workers “consider themselves to be locked out.” A CBC News headline online reads, “Union calls postal service reduction 'partial lockout.'”

The Canadian Labour Code, which governs postal workers, states that a “lockout” “includes the closing of a place of employment, a suspension of work by an employer or a refusal by an employer to continue to employ a number of their employees, done to compel their employees, or to aid another employer to compel that other employer’s employees, to agree to terms or conditions of employment.”

Letter carriers showed up to work on Tuesday, June 14, and were told to go home because Canada Post decided no mail was to be delivered. This is very clearly a “suspension of work by the employer” and in the context of the previous rotating strike, very much “done to compel their employees … to agree to terms or conditions of employment.”

The workers were locked out by their employer, plain and simple. The addition of the caveat “consider themselves” casts doubt on a clear situation, and works in favour of the employer’s spin on the situation.

There are several complexities that reporters and editors may not be familiar with when it comes to labour reporting. For example, during the June 14 partial lockout, CUPW declared the locked out workers to be on strike. This is not because the workers chose to strike that day. By declaring those members on strike, the union was able to protect workers who were not locked out from being pressured or disciplined for refusing to do the work of their locked-out co-workers. It is the responsibility of reporters and editors who intend to cover labour issues to understand these issues in order to cover labour issues fairly and accurately.

This example, though, is just one small example of the corporate and public media’s lack of fair, critical, and accurate coverage of the labour dispute.

Prior to both the rotating strikes and the lockout, which became a nation-wide full lockout on June 15, news sources reporting on the labour negotiations, repeatedly listed wages and benefits that Canada Post workers receive. At $26 per hour, a full-time worker makes about $54,000 per year. While this is higher than the median individual income of Canadian workers, it is well below the median household income of $68,860. The sticking point of the dispute was not wages for current workers. Instead, the issue has always been the implementation of two-tiered wages – lower wages for new workers. These lower wages would see new workers paid about $10,000 less than the median Canadian income, and more than $30,000 below the median household income. We are talking about middle-income, stable, secure jobs. The kind of jobs that governments argue are necessary for economic recovery. CUPW has been fighting to keep these kinds of jobs for new workers.

Many sources, including the CBC, continuously cited Canada Post’s statistic that mail volumes have fallen 17 per cent since 2006. In the Vernon Morning Star in BC, an editorial told readers, “E-mail obviously took over sending a friendly letter in the mail long ago for many of us and internet billing has become the norm … Therefore the amount of mail going into the system has obviously decreased.” Overall, however, mail volumes have increased by 10 per cent since 1997. Considering the worldwide economic recession that has been going on since at least 2008, it is understandable that mail volumes would be down the past couple of years, but it’s hardly an obvious trend. Where was the slew of reporters who should have been asking Canada Post President and CEO Deepak Chopra about the impact of the recession on mail service, whether there were signs of recovery, and what Canada Post was doing to improve and expand services for the future?

Also, there was little to no investigation of why or how mail volumes are dropping. Are people using the mail less? Are people using other mail services? Has Canada Post lost contracts to private companies, or has it given contracts to Purolator, which it owns? Are all volumes down? It is very possible that letter mail volume is down, but parcel shipping is up (think about all the online shopping people do.) Also, the whole argument that mail volumes are down because more things are being done electronically needs to be examined since the internet has been around for a while now. Why wasn’t the corporate and mainstream media looking into all of these issues? Why wasn’t the media exploring what Canada Post could be doing instead – improving door-to-door delivery, providing expanded public services (think of how processing EI claims at a post office could reduce backlogs), or the slew of services taken up by European postal services in the face of more electronic business.

How many stories, instead, were written on the opinions of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on the strike? How many opinion editorials were published by right wing think tanks? Where were the journalists who are supposed to uncover facts?

Perhaps most frustrating was the incompatible arguments that on one hand mail is becoming irrelevant, and on the other, the disruption of the mail service has significant detrimental impacts on the economy – so detrimental that the government needed to legislate the resumption of mail service. Canada Post and the Harper government can’t have it both ways, and where were journalists to interrogate this contradiction?

Repeatedly, articles published that Canada Post lost over $100 million during the labour dispute. This is a number that was put forward by Canada Post and reporters have given no context for how the corporation arrived at that number. Reporters did little to question where that number came from or even when those losses were from.

While the rotating strikes presented delays in mail delivery, mail was still being delivered to the customer, something that postal workers were keeping in mind. While in a legal strike position, they could very well have held a nation-wide strike and stopped mail delivery all together. Instead, rotating strikes were implemented to balance the need to pressure Canada Post to bargain in good faith, and to continue to serve Canadians. Still, though, the corporate and mainstream media consistently repeated Canada Post’s rhetoric that service reductions, and the lockout were the fault of the union.

News sources completely failed to point out that locked out workers received no pay from Canada Post. Postal workers, like all Canadians, have families and bills and responsibilities and were being prevented from working by their employers. What was the economic impact of 48,000 workers being locked out? How much did workers see in lost wages? What were workers doing to make up the lost wages? Did they borrowing more? Did they dipping into savings? Did bills being left unpaid?

Where is the corporate and mainstream media on all of these questions?

Deafeningly silent.

Kaley Kennedy is a member of the Halifax Media Co-op and is involved in Support Postal Workers, a campaign organised by people in Halifax to generate community support for postal workers.

postal workers.ottawa

Universal Access?

hillarybain — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:33:25 +0000

Barriers to accessing health care persist for transgender people in Nova Scotia

HALIFAX—For Chris,* going to see a doctor can be a frightening experience.

Chris, who lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, first came out as a trans person two and a half years ago. Even though he was assigned female at birth, he identifies as trans and presents as a male. Going for a check-up, getting a prescription, or even trying to fill out a general intake form can turn into a huge production, often without any sympathy from hospital or clinical staff.

"I’m always scared. There’s always an element of fear going to visit a health professional. I can’t help thinking ‘am I going to have a bad experience?’” he says.

For Chris and other transgender people, it is difficult to access health care services that many of us take for granted.

Last year, Chris had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and the paramedics didn’t know what pronoun to use to refer to him. He was almost forced to go for a psychological evaluation because he was identified as not “gender normative.” More recently, he decided against getting jaw surgery because of concerns of how he will be treated.

“There’s no place for a preferred name on forms,” says Chris. Hospital and clinic staff, he explains, often refer to you by your legal name, and by the pronoun associated with your sex, regardless of your gender presentation.

Dr. Suzanne Zinck, a childhood psychiatrist who is part of the two-person Transgender Health Team at the IWK Hospital in Halifax, agrees that there continue to be challenges to accessing care for transgender people. But she says she remains optimistic: that with education and training, these can be overcome.

Zinck notes that many transgender people might struggle with dealing with the health risks associated with the sex they were born in. For example, trans men who do not get hysterectomies are still required to get pap smears.

The Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto, which administers hormone therapy for transgender people, recently launched a public health campaign to promote transgender men getting pap smears.

Zinck says these types of campaigns do more than provide public health information to transgender people.

"Making it into a public health campaign shows that this is as valid a part of the community as anything else," she says.

The IWK Transgender Health Team, which includes Zinck and a social worker, was formed four years ago, when the IWK identified a need for more specialized care for transgender youth. The team is mostly responsible for clinical work related to gender-questioning and transgender youth, but is also involved in educational programming on trans issues, and in consulting with doctors in different disciplines related to specific cases involving transgender or gender-questioning youth.

According to Zinck, the Capital District Health Authority has also been doing advocacy and policy work with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Program (NSRAP) to better serve transgender patients.

“There are many barriers that have come down in the past four years, not only due to our work, but due to all the educational work being done,” says Zinck.

However, she adds, there is still significant room for improvement.

While hormone treatments are fully covered by Nova Scotia health insurance, access is limited because the endocrinology clinic that administers the hormones is in Halifax. This can make it difficult and costly for patients who have to travel into the city for treatment. The clinic also will only see people who are 18 and over, meaning youth who wish to transition earlier have difficulty accessing hormones.

Other services remain “completely off the radar for most people,” says Zinck. For example, there is no coverage for trans women who need to access voice training. For trans women such training can be essential to their ability to present as female.

The opinion of medical professionals on covering these services “run the gamut,” but for Zinck these are essential services.

“If someone looks gender ambiguous or mismatched in terms of who they present as and what they look like, that can lead to lifelong problems of discrimination, not to mention mental health and self-esteem issues,” says Zinck. She adds that transgender people continue to be underemployed based on their education levels and have lower educational attainment than their non-transgender peers. This, for Zinck, is closely tied to “whether or not a person can pass [for the gender they present as].”

Sex reassignment surgery (SRS), which is the largest cost related to transitioning is not covered by public health insurance in any of the Maritime province. SRS was also recently de-listed by the Alberta government as a service covered by provincial health insurance. Last year, Manitoba rejected a proposal that would fully cover SRS surgeries.

Many provinces require people who are interested in having SRS to travel to the Canadian Association of Mental Health Gender Clinic in Toronto in order for it to be covered by health insurance. Most provinces, however, do not cover the associated travel costs.

In December 2009, Chris traveled to Ontario get chest surgery related to his transitioning. While he received some help from friends, he covered the bulk of the cost out of his own pocket. This experience is not uncommon.

Two years ago, Sandra Bornemann helped start the TransAction Society of Nova Scotia, after organising a fundraiser to raise money for chest surgery of a friend. It was the first fundraiser of its kind in Nova Scotia, and raised about one third of the surgery’s $6300 price-tag.

After that first fundraiser, Bornemann says TransAction re-evaluated its priorities, realizing they could make more of an impact helping with the everyday costs transgender people face for things like chest bindings; gaffs, which help trans women hide their genitals; breast forms; and packers, penis forms sometimes worn by trans men.

The decision not to raise money for surgery was also a political one, says Bornemann.

“We believe surgery should be covered [by provincial health insurance], so we’re not going to give the government an out by paying for that service,” says Bornemann. She says that the members of the society also realize that many transgender people don’t want to have sex reassignment surgery.

Over the past two years, the TransAction Society has provided chest bindings and gaffs free of charge to dozens of people in Nova Scotia. They are hoping that through additional fundraising, they will also be able to provide breast forms and packers in the near future.

“It’s little things,” says Bornemann, “but they are expensive.”

For Chris, social and structural changes are necessary if access to health services are going to improve. He says there needs to be more education, better training for health professionals on transgender issues, and more visibly trans-positive spaces to access care.

Until then, small improvements, like better access to hormones and more accessible information forms, could go a long way.

“I’m really frustrated by the lack of people able to administer hormones. It’s possible to get [better access to hormones], but its not happening.”

Bornemann says she hears the same thing from transgender people—that small improvements make a big difference.

“We’ve had so much support. People have come to us and say they are supporting of the fact that we’re filling these everyday needs,” she says.

*Name has been changed.

Kaley Kennedy is a feminist activist living in Halifax. She is a member of the Halifax Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Universal Access?

Reproductive Justice in Nova Scotia

hillarybain — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:30:22 +0000

Conference organizers take pro-active approach to fighting anti-abortion climate on campuses

HALIFAX—“We are women whose ultimate goal is the liberation of women in society,” echoes the chorus of Jane: Abortion and the Underground, a play that retells the story of an underground abortion service in Chicago. “One important way we are working towards that goal is by helping any woman who wants an abortion to get one as safely and as cheaply as possible under current conditions,” the chorus continues, reading lines from the service’s first flier.

The flier is from 1968.

Move forward to 2010 and an audience of about 200 is sitting in the MacNally Theatre at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax watching the story’s retelling and reflecting on what has changed and what has not.

The performance was a fundraiser for the conference Trust Women: A conference on reproductive justice. The need for such a conference was, for many, a surprising reminder of the work that still needs to be done.

“Because we’ve won the legal battle [on abortions] people think that the struggle is over,” says Jane Gavin-Hebert, organizer of the Trust Women conference. “But it's not."

Indeed, January 28th—the day of the conference—marked twenty-one years since the complete decriminalization of abortion.

There’s no denying that she’s right.

According to a 2007 study by Canadians for Choice entitled Reality Check, women across the country continue to face barriers in accessing abortion services. The report found that between 2003 and 2006, the number of hospitals providing abortions declined. Currently only 16 per cent of Canadian hospitals perform the simple procedure, and the majority of hospitals are in urban areas within 150 kilometers from the border.

Access in the Maritime Provinces was identified as especially poor. There are no abortion providers in Prince Edward Island, meaning women have to travel to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick for the procedure and often have to pay out of pocket.

In New Brunswick, only one hospital openly provides abortions, and the province refuses to fund abortion services at the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton. Women in New Brunswick are required to obtain referrals from two doctors in order to access a publicly-funded abortion.

While abortion services in Nova Scotia are more accessible than New Brunswick and PEI, there continues to be several barriers.

“There are definite gaps in therapeutic abortion services,” says Angus Campbell, the Executive Director of the Halifax Sexual Health Centre. “There are a very limited number of sites that will perform [Therapeutic Abortions] in Nova Scotia. The waiting time can be up to four weeks.”

In Nova Scotia, women are required to go through a three-step process to obtain an abortion. First, they must go to a clinic or family doctor and receive a referral, then the clinic or doctor will arrange for blood work and an ultrasound, and finally, the appointment will be scheduled. Average waiting times, says Campbell, is two to three weeks.

While about 50 per cent of abortions in Canada are performed at clinics, there are no abortion clinics in Nova Scotia.

“In Ontario all free standing clinics are covered under health care. This permits a woman to make her own appointment where she will get ultrasound, blood work and procedure, usually in one day but sometimes two days,” says Campbell. “The fact that women in Nova Scotia have to attend multiple medical appointments prior to the procedure is a barrier to accessing services.”

The abortion procedures in Nova Scotia are covered by provincial medical insurance, but despite the fact that the majority of women have to travel to Halifax for the procedure, there is no money available for travel or childcare costs. Also, women who have out of province health cards face fees anywhere from $230 to $700 for the procedure.

There is no master list available of where a woman can receive an abortion in the province, says Valerie Bellafonte, the communication director of the Nova Scotia Department of Health. The majority of therapeutic abortions in Nova Scotia are performed at the Termination of Pregnancy Unit (TPU) at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax

In Reality Check, the study’s researcher had to make five separate phone calls to Victoria General and needed to leave a voicemail in order to speak with someone in the right department. The report explains that voicemail messages may create barriers for some women.

"Some women do not have a phone or do not have a place where they may privately talk about their unwanted pregnancy. Other women have concerns about a lack of confidentiality," says the report.

For Gavin-Hebert, who is also a mother and a Masters student in gender and women’s studies at Saint Mary’s University, in order to bring about real change in reproductive justice, the struggle has to be about more than access to abortion, it also has to be about educating the public.

Last winter, the Saint Mary's chaplaincy office sponsored a presentation by the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform entitled "Echoes of the Holocaust." This presentation is an extension of the centre's Genocide Awareness Project.

“The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) is a visual display composed of 4’x8’ (or 6’x13’) billboards which graphically compare the victims of abortion to victims of other atrocities, such as Jews in the Holocaust,” reads the website of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

GAP debuted on campuses in 1999 at the University of British Columbia.

Joyce Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and one of the speakers at the Trust Women conference, says that the presentations are not only unfair, but that at almost every campus that GAP has visited, students or the university, and often both, have put up a fight.

“GAP is deliberately provocative,” she says.

Many campuses have restricted or forbade GAP presentations from happening on campus.

Last February, the University of Calgary charged students with the group Campus Pro-Life with trespassing after they refused to adhere to the university’s restrictions regarding a GAP display the students organized in November 2008.

“This is not an issue about Freedom of Speech,” reads a statement from the university regarding the incident. “The paramount issues for the University are the needs to uphold its legal right to manage activities on campus, and to ensure the safety and security for the thousands of students, staff, faculty and community members on campus each day.”

In October, the Students’ Society of McGill University publicly censured an “Echoes of the Holocaust” presentation being held at McGill. The university allowed the presentation to go forward, and two students were arrested while protesting the event.

“We feel that McGill University has…failed to protect students' rights,” explains an open letter from the student union to McGill University.

“This event created a hostile environment and should not have been permitted. It is possibly most disappointing that when students' peacefully engaged in a public response to this hostile environment, they were removed through a police intervention,” the letter continues.

When it became apparent that Saint Mary’s University would be hosting one of these presentations, members of the feminist community, and other communities – such as the Atlantic Jewish Council – expressed their concerns regarding the risk of such a presentation on the health and safety of students, particularly women and Jewish students.

Ultimately, according to Gavin-Hebert, the university determined it to be a low-risk event, and the presentation went forward.

Afterward, Gavin-Hebert and another student initiated a complaint process with the university and provided some possible solutions – one of which was holding a feminist community education session.

The result was Trust Women: A conference on reproductive justice held at Saint Mary’s University on January 28.

“On campus, in this context of an anti-abortion climate, we needed to put forward a feminist analysis,” says Gavin-Hebert. “We wanted to do something that would be empowering.”

The conference included a full day of workshops for community organizers, students, and faculty, and an evening of keynote speakers .

In addition to Joyce Arthur, the evening event included presentations by Loretta Ross, a veteran feminist activist and national coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, and Jessica Yee, founder of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

It was important for the organizers that the conference focus on the broader topic of reproductive justice.

“We wanted to focus on abortion rights, but we know we need to go beyond that,” says Gavin-Hebert. “We need to fight for a rape free culture, for birth control, for child support and childcare, for sex worker rights. All of these things are connected.”

Kaley Kennedy is a student activist in Halifax. She has been working in the struggle for reproductive freedom since she was a teenager.

This article was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Abortion