The Dominion - 74

Ai Ai Ai

Tim McSorley — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 05:08:48 +0000

The slow-moving, smiling brown-throated sloth

The brown-throated three-toed sloth inhabits the upper branches of the tropical forests of Central and Latin America. Spending up to three days in a single tree before moving on to the next, this long-limbed critter feeds on leaves, twigs and fruit. Brown-throated sloths can sleep up to 20 hours per day and move at a maximum speed of about 0.3 miles per hour. Their slow movement and low metabolism means they can take up to a month to digest just one meal.

Its incredibly slow movement makes it easy prey, especially on the ground. But lengthy arms with long, sharp claws provide a significant defense from larger animals. In the rainy season, its long, wiry brown and grey fur develops patches of green algae, which helps it camouflage itself among the foliage.

The most common of the four species of three-toed sloths, the brown-throated sloth is distinguished by brown fur around its throat and on its chest, a "mask" of black fur around the eyes and, on males, an orange or yellow patch of fur between their shoulder blades. Like other sloths they can turn their heads 90 degrees, and their mouths naturally take the shape of a smile. While they are mammals, they also have the reptilian characteristic of having a body temperature that fluctuates as the external temperature goes up or down. Weighing 0.2 to 0.25 kilograms at birth, adults grow to the size of a cat—about four kilograms.

The brown-throated sloth is a primarily solitary animal, coupling only to mate. To attract males, the female makes an "ay" cry, which many say sounds like a woman screaming. It is also very similar to the sound both male and female sloths make when they are in danger. This noise has led the animal to also be referred to as the "ai" by the Guarani people of South America.

While the sloth moves with difficulty on the ground, it still descends from its perch in the humid canopy once every week. The terrestrial trek is made in order to dig a small hole into which it defecates, covering the hole with leaves. It is a precarious venture for the sloth, as it might need to descend 30 metres to reach the ground, putting it at the mercy of jaguars and other carnivores.

While its habitat has suffered from deforestation and fragmentation, its wide habitat (from Honduras in the north to parts of southern Brazil) and adaptability have allowed the brown-throated sloth to thrive.

Brown-throated three-toed sloth

Excluded, but not Silenced

Moira Peters — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:43:32 +0000

Indigenous Peoples at COP16

CANCUN, MEXICO—Led by members of international farmers movement La Via Campesina and the Indigenous Peoples Caucus, thousands marched through the searing heat in Cancun, Mexico, in December 2010, to demand real climate solutions. Their message was loud and clear: the communities on the front-lines of the problem—those who face the daily impacts of the climate crisis—are also on the front-lines of the solutions.

"Current models of consumption, production and trade have caused massive environmental destruction," according to a statement by La Via Campesina. "Indigenous peoples and peasant farmers, men and women, are the main victims. [We] need a change in economic and development paradigms. Human beings do not own nature, but rather form part of all that lives."

Images and text by Allan Lissner, an independent photojournalist based in Toronto.

Cop 16 Picture 2

Cop 16 Picture 3

Cop 16 Picture 1

Cop 16 Picture 4

Issue #74

Tim McSorley — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:03:15 +0000

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January 2011

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Hemp Wanted

Moira Peters — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:59:20 +0000

Once illegal material promises dizzying array of green energy uses

HALIFAX—Wanda Beattie, president and CEO of Atlantic Healing Hemp, paces the floor of her flagship store in Berwick, Nova Scotia. She is a woman on a mission. The shelves around her are lined with hemp salves, hemp balms, cold-pressed hemp seed oil and vacuum-sealed bags of crushed hemp seeds. The hemp is top quality and Canadian grown, but it’s definitely not local—and that's something Beattie would like to change.

“At the moment I’m bringing in hemp oil in large quantities from Winnipeg," she says. "That’s the hemp heartland. There was an attempt to grow hemp in Nova Scotia, back in 2000, but it wasn’t feasible because there wasn’t a market for the product. There was some amateur processing being done, but nothing of any scale."

Beattie's mission: to resurrect the deep-seeded relationship between Nova Scotia soil and hemp.

Port Royal, Nova Scotia, was the site of North America’s first recorded hemp crop, in 1606.

But by 2009, Saskatchewan had 5,090 acres licensed for hemp and Manitoba had 6,015 acres. Nova Scotia had none.

“The issue is not related to soil,” says Beattie. “There is wonderful soil here in the Annapolis Valley. You can grow hemp here. Top quality hemp. In 2000, Nova Scotia farmers proved it could be done. There’s simply not enough of a market.”

The hemp plant has had many uses. Christopher Columbus swore by hemp sails. Hemp rope, even 50-year-old hemp rope, is still highly sought after for its water-resistant qualities. Anything oil, lumber or cotton can do, hemp can do better. The seeds can be eaten or pressed into oil. Both methods of ingestion are extremely healthy.

As Beattie will tell you, hemp seeds contain all the essential fatty acids. Her hemp cream also goes on smooth after a shave.

Re-education is a large part of Beattie’s campaign to get hemp back into the Nova Scotia diet and consciousness. She and her husband Brian offer weekly, one-hour information sessions out of the Berwick store. She also offers free presentations to Nova Scotia groups and businesses.

“People in the area just don’t know about the benefits of hemp. We grew up in a generation that didn’t hear anything about hemp. Consumers are looking at our products now, and they know they have a value, because they have been used for thousands of years. Younger people are using hemp as a preventative, incorporating it into their diets to stay healthy." Others use it to treat chronic health issues like sciatic nerve pain, eczema, psoriasis, arthritis, acid reflux and to lower chloresterol levels.

Hemp was banned in Canada and the US in 1938. Jack Herer, in his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, highlights the link between DuPont’s patenting, that same year, of the processes of making plastics out of petroleum and paper out of wood pulp, and the continent-wide ban on growing hemp. In 1998, amid growing interest in textile alternatives, Health Canada lifted its ban.

Hemp requires a relatively small up-front investment for processing infrastructure. Compared to oil, pulp and cotton, hemp is of higher quality and is much cheaper. Hemp is therefore a logical alternative to many of the products the Western diet currently consumes at an alarming rate.

Travis Truso is the owner of Hemp Haven in Regina, Saskatchewan. He has been in the hemp selling business for six years, and he is the main contact for the Saskatchewan Hemp Association.

“I’ve talked to 100 farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and only one of them even baled his stalk," says Truso. "The rest just burned their stalks or cultivated them back into the soil. Ninety-nine per cent of farmers are just selling their hemp seed. There is zero industry in Canada for fibre and stalk.”

The fibre and stalk of the hemp plant is where so many of its benefits are found. When processed, the fibres and hurd (stalk centre) can produce a multitude of products.

“There are quite a few encouraging things going on in Canada with hemp right now," says Truso. "Motive is a car company out of Alberta. They just created an electric car, and the body of the car is made out of hemp composite. The car has been reviewed really positively, and they want to commercially launch it by 2013."

“I see hemp fibre board as being a very promising industry with lots of room to grow," he says. "Right now the government annually subsidizes the lumber industry with $1 billion of taxpayers’ money. You cannot produce paper from lumber for the price we buy it at in the store. The entire industry is subsidized. And once you cut a forest down, your next crop isn’t ready for 100 years. Why have we built a society that takes trees for paper? It’s insane.”

Truso argues that when it comes to textiles, hemp doesn’t just compete with cotton, it’s far superior.

"The absurdity of growing cotton for textiles... Pests love it, and the only way it could have evolved was through intensive labour. Cotton needed slave labour to evolve. And then the product is just a short, brittle piece of fibre that wears out in a year. Hemp makes the strongest fibre, and it doesn’t wear out, it wears in. Levis jeans were originally made from hemp.”

Truso also points to hemp's potential energy efficiency.

“Henry Ford grew hemp, and his first diesel engine ran off hemp oil at 90 per cent cleaner and 60 per cent more efficient than fuel oil. It’s got the most biomass per crop, per acre, of anything grown.”

Hemp is also one of the greenest crops grown. “All the farmers that currently grow hemp in Saskatchewan do so keeping organic practices in mind," says Truso. "They are growing it in rotation with wheat, rye and grain crops. Hemp pulls an enormous amount of toxins out of the soil, and I’ve got it from a representative from Health Canada who says that if hemp were grown in three consecutive years on the same land, that land would be free of other weeds. You can virtually drop the seed in the soil, come back in 120 days, and combine your yield.”

Canadian law, however, makes it hard to be a hemp farmer. “Hemp is the only legal crop in Canada that requires a license to grow. You have to go through so much paper work. You need to have a criminal check, and you need to have your crops tested for THC content twice yearly. For a lot of farmers, the hassle is just too much.”

Processing the stalk, on an industrial scale, requires a processing plant, which would cost several million dollars—so far a prohibitive sum for investors. Various levels of Canadian government have had several opportunities to build a Canadian hemp processing plant, and each time they failed to seal the deal.

Truso talks about one that got away.

“In Craik, Saskatchewan, a company called Natural Alternative Technologies (NAT) approached the town with the idea of building a hemp processing plant. That was in 2004. At that point we had a New Democratic government in Saskatchewan, and they were for it. They offered up half the capital for the plant if NAT could raise the rest.

"From 2004 to 2008, NAT developed its technology, and raised its capital. In 2008 Saskatchewan elected the Saskatchewan Party, which is a far right party. In their first week of being in office they cancelled their contract with NAT. Since then NAT has gone bankrupt, and has sold its technology to Haines Underwear.”

Despite growing almost 20,000 acres of hemp, Canada remains without a plant to process it. Canadian hemp stalks, for lack of a buyer, are burned. Hemp-stalk products, among them hemp textiles, are largely imported from China.

“Almost every Canadian designer that’s manufacturing hemp clothing is getting their yarn from China," says Truso. "The floor of my store is made from hemp fibre board. It’s twice as strong as plywood and will last twice as long. I bought it imported from China.”

Without government assistance, and without a processing plant, hemp farmers across Saskatchewan are still growing over 5,000 acres of hemp. Only the seeds are being harvested.

“There are no government subsidies for hemp seed," says Truso. "The farmers need to go out on their own, and find all of their own contracts. At the end of the year, a lot of them still have 50 to 100,000 pounds of hemp seed left over.”

Truso says any initiative for processing stalk will have to come from the grassroots. “A company called Hill Agra in Ontario has invented a portable fibre extractor that can fit behind any tractor. The base model sells for $80,000. Several have been sold to Europe, and quite a few to China, but so far none in Canada. In the spring this extractor would decorticate your fibre and your hurds [process the stalk]. You’d be ready to stamp fibre boards. You’d be ready to mix hemp concrete."

"And," he adds, "hemp is still illegal to grow in America, so you’d have a huge market for your product. You’d be creating a groundbreaking industry."

For more information on applying to grow your own hemp, contact the Controlled Substances Division of Health Canada, at 1-613-948-6408.

Miles Howe hails from Ottawa, Ontario, and currently calls Halifax home. He has a Masters degree in Sociology, plays a wicked harmonica, and bakes a mean banana cake.

Hemp seeds

Hemp yarn

Raising Other People’s Kids

Tim McSorley — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:02:11 +0000

Filipina women speak out against exploitation under the Live-In Caregiver Program

VANCOUVER—Jocelyn Vergabera’s high cheekbones swell as her lips pull back in a disarming smile. She says her job at Tim Hortons is a big improvement from the years she spent working as a live-in caregiver in Shaughnessy. But while the twinkle in her eye is a sign of her vitality and friendliness, it also masks the torment of a long road towards a better life—one which is far from over.

In the last seven years Vergabera has only seen her children by webcam, and she is worried that she won’t recognize them.

“I want to touch them, I want to hug them, I want to make up all that time that I haven’t given them. I have looked after other children; I have kissed and hugged other people’s children but not my own,” she says.

Vergabera’s situation is common for Filipina women coming to Canada under the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). The LCP, officially established in 1992, issues a temporary work visa valid for up to four years to a qualifying applicant, who is expected to board in her employer’s home while working as a live-in caregiver for children, disabled or aging persons. In 2005, Filipina women accounted for 95.6 per cent of the live-in caregivers in Canada. In 2006, 21,489 workers held a work permit under the LCP program.

The way Canada’s LCP appears on paper appeals to Filipina migrant workers: it provides for defined working hours (eight hours per day), a good salary (minimum wage), and most importantly, the opportunity to become a landed immigrant after completing two years of work.

But the reality for many of the Filipina women who enter under the LCP includes hours of unpaid overtime, living in constant fear of their employers, and facing years of separation from their own families while they wait for their immigration papers to be processed.

The federal government undertook a review of the LCP in 2008–2009. As of April 2010, participants have four years to complete the required 24 months' work as full-time live-in caregivers (previously it was three years), participants can use overtime hours to complete the program in as little as 22 months, and the second medical exam required to apply for permanent residency has been eliminated.

As well, employers are now required to include working hours and wages in their employee contract and they are responsible for paying for their employee’s processing fees and airfare to Canada as well as for providing private medical insurance until their employee’s provincial coverage is activated.

In April 2011, the government will implement a more rigorous assessment of the validity of an employer's job offer job offer and introduce a two-year ban from the program for abusive employers.

Advocates at the Philippine Women Centre (PWC) say these changes will not stop the exploitation and are calling on the federal government to scrap the LCP altogether, saying it’s a blemish on Canada’s human rights record that promotes a cycle of poverty for Filipina migrant workers.

The live-in requirement of the program makes these women vulnerable to exploitation, explains Charlene Sayo, who is the Executive Director of the Philippine Women Centre of BC.

“How do you regulate a private home?” asks Sayo. “They’re working in their employer’s home where the power relation is well established.” This power relation is also recognized by the federal government in their official response to a formal recommendation to make the live-in condition of the LCP optional:

The live-in requirement is a vital component of the LCP. Although there are Canadians qualified to work as caregivers, there is a shortage of those willing to work as live-in caregivers.

Vergabera understands why Canadians find this type of work undesirable.

Her story as a live-in domestic worker started in 1994. Desperate to escape an abusive husband and support her three children, Vergabera left her home in the Philippines to work abroad. She first went to Saudi Arabia as a live-in domestic worker where she was never allowed to leave the house and was paid $150 per month.

After four years she returned to the Philippines desperate to see her children. “I didn’t even recognize them,” says Vergabera in a pained voice. However, as much as she wanted to stay with her children she soon realized that the reasons she left had not changed.

Ten months later she went to Taiwan, a more liberal country with a much higher salary. She worked two jobs, was on call 24/7 and never had a day off, but with a monthly salary of $900 she was able to care for her own children as well as pay for all of her siblings to go to college.

Then one fateful day in Taipei, Vergabera met a fellow Filipina migrant worker who told her about the LCP program in Canada.

The possibility of reuniting her family in Canada was like a dream for Vergabera. Using all of her savings, she paid the $3500 processing fee to a Philippines-based agent to handle her paperwork.

Sayo says this money exchange is one of the reasons the Canadian government is not motivated to eliminate the LCP, despite the documented systemic exploitation it creates. Through the LCP, the government is attempting to solve the childcare crisis in the private sector instead of investing in universal child and elderly care; something that would benefit all Canadians, instead of just those who can afford a live-in caregiver. Not only do these women pay agency and application fees to come to Canada, they’re often well-educated and equipped with skills Canada didn’t invest in.

When Vergabera arrived in Canada she was surprised to discover she would be keeping only $900 out of the promised $1,400 monthly salary after room, board and taxes were deducted. Worse yet, when she described her living circumstances, they were not that different from those in Saudi Arabia. Her employer was an affluent family in Shaughnessy who forced her to work unpaid overtime, forbade her to have a TV in her room and rarely let her leave the house, which they kept alarmed.

Vergabera knew her employer was violating her rights, but she didn’t feel that she could fight back. “As a live-in you can’t assert yourself because you don’t want to screw up your application,” she explains. “You swallow it, the bad words and unpaid overtime.”

After so many years of sacrifice, she wasn’t willing to jeopardize her chance to reunite her family in Canada by standing up for her rights.

The employer-specific work permit issued under the LCP is another condition that makes these women vulnerable to exploitation. If an employee wants to seek a new employer, she has to apply for a new work permit, which can take many months to process. She often doesn’t have savings to tide her over while she waits, because all her money has been sent back to the Philippines to support her family. Time spent waiting also eats into her four-year time limit for completing her 24 months' work as a live-in caregiver, and it just extends the time she’s separated from her family.

For this reason the PWC is also advocating that in the short-term the LCP change its employer-specific work permit to an open one, as well as grant landed status upon arrival. “Give them a fair start in Canada, don’t let them come in on losing ground, these women are already vulnerable to begin with,” says Sayo.

With the dream of reuniting her family, Vergabera bit her tongue and persevered with her employer. In 2008 she completed her mandatory two years' work as a live-in caregiver and applied to become a landed immigrant. She has been waiting since. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the normal processing time is 16 months, but Vergabera says she has peers who have waited up to 10 years to be processed.

And while Vergabera’s dream of a family reunion is shared by many women in the LCP, UBC professor Dr. Geraldine Pratt cautions that it can be a difficult process.

Pratt’s research found that for women in the LCP it takes five to six years to bring their families to Canada. Re-establishing relationships after years of separation is complicated, especially when a family is struggling to survive and the children are trying to adapt to a new culture. This stress is reflected in a high drop-out rate for Filipino children, which Dr. Pratt says is worrying for a community that values education highly.

“The Filipino community has the highest educational level of any immigrant group, and what we may see is a radical downward educational and social mobility,” explains Pratt.

This is compounded by the fact that the LCP de-skills its participants. About eighty percent of Filipina women in the LCP have postsecondary education; many are trained as registered nurses, midwives and teachers. But most end up trapped in a cycle of survival and never manage to leave entry-level jobs in the service or health sectors.

Since completing her work requirement for the LCP, Vergabera has found a new job at Tim Hortons. Even though she’s still struggling, she’s much happier now that her rights in the workplace are respected.

In the meantime, she is anxiously waiting for the day she can hug her children again, which she hopes will be next year. They are adults now, and she’s warned them that living in Canada can be a tough experience. Despite their professional degrees, she knows that they’ll probably also be serving coffee, fighting to survive. But at least they’ll be fighting together.

Esther Hsieh is a Vancouver-based freelance journalist. The article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Surrogate mother

Building Prisons, Creating Prisoners

Moira Peters — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:02:55 +0000

Harper gets “tough on crime” and everyone pays

MONTREAL—"It's wrong to believe that more time inside is what will make people safe," says James*, who was recently released from a maximum security prison. "If you want to fight crime, put money into communities, like job opportunities. The best way to fight crime is to fight poverty."

Since Prime Minister Harper took office, Correctional Services Canada (CSC)'s net budget has increased by 54 per cent to $2.46 billion for 2010–2011; it is predicted to increase further to $3.12 billion by 2012–2013, according to CSC. Much of this money is for capital expenditures such as construction of new prisons; in 2010, $329.4 million is set for capital expenditures, and in 2012–2013 that is set to increase to $466.9 million.

The number of incarcerated people in Canada is expected to soar due to new legislation introduced by the Conservative government.

"These prisons that will be coming online aren't even going to put a dent in the number of prisoners that they're going to be creating [with] this legislation," says prison justice activist Justin Piche, who notes that at least 22 new provincial-territorial prisons are being built in Canada and 15 additions are being made to existing facilities.

The Parliamentary Budget Office predicted in June 2010 that Bill C-25, which lengthens prisoners' stays by eliminating the "two-for-one" credit for time served pre-sentencing, will incur over $2 billion in construction, operation, and management costs over a five-year period. These costs correlate to the increased cost of housing these prisoners. The proposed Bill S-10, which involves mandatory minimum sentencing of six months for those producing as few as five marijuana plants, would add additional costs and increase the prison population in numbers that Correctional Services Canada says it cannot predict.

"It's like they're using a bigger net because they have to catch more fish. They're trying to pull people back in," says James. "There is no supporting data that this works, but nobody cares because it's prisoners, and prisoners are seen as second class."

Piche, co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, and author of the popular blog Tracking the Politics of "Crime" and Punishment in Canada says the government's changes in legislation, though expensive, are not needed and will not make the streets safer.

This legislation is being introduced despite the fact that Statistics Canada reports that crime rates have been falling steadily since the 1990s.

As the numbers of prisoners is set to rise, the living conditions of prisoners are far below those of the non-incarcerated population. Overcrowding is worsening, according to the Correctional Investigator of Canada's annual report, and incidents of prisoners facing violence from guards are also increasing. Suicide rates are more than seven times higher than the rest of Canada, HIV transmission rates are 10 times higher in prison, and the prevalence of Hepatitis C is 25 times greater. Access to clean needles and condoms is nearly non-existent, creating what many view as a health crisis inside the walls of prisons.

In an interview with Maclean's magazine, the Correctional Investigator of Canada notes that less than three per cent of the budget for prison expansion is to go towards programming inside prisons.

"There used to be so much more in terms of programs, and the ability to learn skills and trades," says James. "They take more and more of that away and we know that it's not coming back."

The Canadian government notes on their Public Safety website that 12 per cent of male and 26 per cent of female offenders have serious mental health problems; and about four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a serious substance abuse problem. This reality, however, is not leading to a corresponding increase in the mental health treatment for prisoners.

James notes that psychotherapy used to be easier to access; but increasingly, guards hold the de facto responsibility for prisoners with mental health issues. "Now guards play the role of the therapists," says James, "because they're there full time. They [the prison system] save money." The Correctional Investigator of Canada has repeatedly denounced the lack of funding for mental health treatment in prisons.

"It's increasingly recognized that our prisons have become dumping grounds for those suffering from mental illnesses, those who have substance-abuse addictions, and also other marginalized populations, particularly the poor, including Aboriginals, who are completely over-represented within our prisons," says Piche.

The increase in spending on prison expansion comes amidst cuts in many other sectors as part of the "austerity measures" that Harper announced at the close of the G20 meetings in Toronto. Money for community spending, for Indigenous peoples, and for women's groups have been slashed across the country.

Piche asserts that the over-representation of marginalized populations in prisons, such as people living in poverty or First Nations peoples, "indicates our inability to use appropriate services to address the needs of [these] populations. These populations are over-policed, over-prosecuted, they are sentenced in a disproportionate fashion, and this basically leads to their over-representation in prisons."

Peter Collins, an outspoken prison justice advocate, reflects on the rising costs of the "prison industrial complex" in a time of "fiscal restraint."

"If you look at the way that they spend on things that they want to spend on, which is the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex, you can see that they are not really in a time of fiscal restraint, they are in a time of abundant spending. It just depends on what they want to spend it on," says Collins. "If it involves killing people or punishing people, there is a lot of money for that."

Collins, who recently won the Canadian Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, is currently serving a life sentence in Bath Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario.

Furthermore, Piche adds, "It costs more to imprison people than it does to put money into community programs, which actually address real social ills." Indeed, the Parliamentary Budget Office reports the average cost of an inmate in 2009-2010 to be $162,373, while community-based organizations across the country are fighting to survive.

To Collins and many others, it is this basic lack of justice that is putting growing numbers of people behind bars for longer and longer stays.

"It is so many people from low economic situations [who are in prisons]," says Collins. When living in poverty children "often do not do as well in school, they're going to school hungry or tired. Some of them have or develop learning disabilities [and struggle with school] and then you have schools operating with their no-tolerance attitudes...and when the kid runs afoul then he's on the street," explains Collins. "What are the kids supposed to do? When do we take some responsibility in society for that kid's opportunity or lack of it?"

Though the Canadian government refers to its prison system as "rehabilitative," Collins disagrees. He points out that it is not only poor conditions inside of prisons or the expansion of prisons that should be criticized, but the very idea of using incarceration as a solution: "At the end of the day, regardless of how pretty or how ugly a prison is, it's still a prison. Deprivation does not work, you simply can't rehabilitate someone inside of a cage."

"They treat you like an infant, like a 'bad child,'" agrees James. "They try to hold you in for so long, it harms you."

Piche says these statements are supported by the evidence. "It has been demonstrated in studies about the US system of longer-term incarceration and mandatory minimums that indeed, though much more money is spent, American-style justice and imprisonment systems do not work in reducing or in preventing crime".

Collins sees a deep injustice in a system he says doesn't make the streets any safer but puts public money into locking away economically and racially marginalized people, while others walk free. "There are different ways that we can see criminals. If you look at the tar sands—the way that they're pumping toxins into the Athabasca river and poisoning everybody downstream, and the air—how is that not criminal?" asks Collins. Collins has faced severe repercussions and the denial of his parole as a direct consequence of speaking out from inside prison, yet he continues to do so.

"There is a punishment for speaking out. But I think that there is punishment for shutting up as well. At the end of the day, if you know that something should be said and you don't say it, you're going to pay some price in terms of your integrity, your dignity. So you've got to make the choice of where you want to pay your toll."

* Not his real name.

Robyn Maynard is a movement writer, radio journalist, and activist based in Montreal. She co-hosts No One Is Illegal Radio and is involved in various grassroots campaigns for migrant justice, and against police violence and impunity.

Cookie-cutter prisons

Ball and chain

Sisters in Spirit Smothered

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:17:42 +0000

Conservative smoke-and-mirrors funding has Indigenous groups up in arms

VANCOUVER—Ten million dollars set aside by the Harper government to address the crisis of missing or murdered Aboriginal women will be redirected to the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Public Safety.

And that has some groups, like Vancouver's Walk 4 Justice, fuming.

“We have the answers and tools already because we’ve been working on this issue for a long time,” said Gladys Radek, a co-founder of the Indigenous-led campaign.

Radek was jolted into action when her niece, Tamara Chipman, disappeared in 2005 along Highway 16 in northern British Columbia. She has since organized three walks—the first a 4,000-kilometre march from Vancouver to Ottawa in the summer of 2008—to press the federal government to initiate a public inquiry and deal with the root causes of violence against Indigenous women.

“This funding will do nothing to address the issue," she said. “This is about power and control again.”

Eight months after the 2010 budget release of promised funding, Minister for Status of Women Rona Ambrose announced the money will be spent on seven different initiatives, the bulk on a national police support center for missing persons.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) quickly expressed their alarm.

“While NWAC is supportive in principle to see the Government of Canada taking steps to address the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, we must undoubtedly express our disappointment with the exclusion of Sisters In Spirit in the ongoing development of public policy in the matter,” they stated in a release.

The Conservatives kept Sisters in Spirit—NWAC’s research, education and policy initiative that deals with missing and murdered Aboriginal women—in limbo for eight months, and then gave NWAC only a day’s notice before the announcement was finally made.

Status of Women officials made clear to NWAC that any new funding proposals would not permit the use of the Sisters in Spirit name or the continuation of their groundbreaking and growing database.

Since 2005, Sisters in Spirit has been gathering complex statistical information on violence against Aboriginal women. It has shown that more than 582 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since roughly 1980. Twenty of the cases have occurred in the past year, and 226 in the past 10 years. Such information was previously scattered and highly deficient.

Liberal MP and Official Opposition Critic for Status of Women, Anita Neville believes the Conservative government’s move was deceptive.

“It was a duplicitous announcement,” Neville said. “Ambrose framed it as ten million going towards Aboriginal women but a good deal is going to their own justice systems, not Aboriginal women. Sisters in Spirit was told to shut down, told not to collect stats or advocate, but still they were used as a poster program. It’s all smoke and mirrors and it’s disrespectful. Ambrose should be ashamed at playing with women’s lives this way.”

Despite Harper’s stated commitment to “take concrete steps to address the issue of missing or murdered Aboriginal women,” the details in the announcement are not specific to Aboriginal women.

Instead, the largest portion of the funding will be spent on a generic RCMP missing-persons database and amendments to the criminal code to allow more police freedom around warrants and wire-taps. A much smaller fraction of the funds will go toward what many see as the most critical work: victim, family and healing support, and dealing with the root causes of violence.

“Working with the community and police was a part of Sisters in Spirit’s comprehensive plan, but the idea that this is the sole focus of this new strategy completely misses the point,” said Niki Ashton, an NDP MP. “I doubt it will make a difference for Aboriginal women living on the ground. It’s a short-sighted approach and reflects a lack of consultation.”

NDP Aboriginal Affairs critic Jean Crowder agrees with Ashton.

“They [the Government of Canada] needed to work with Aboriginal women to see what else would be helpful and what was missing, but the money is going towards the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Public Safety.”

“What it needed to do was build on Sisters in Spirit, [who are] the experts. Money needed to go into helping the families of the murdered and missing women, to help them understand the legal system, and access trauma counseling. But that's not what is happening.”

Opposition critics have also accused the Conservatives of pushing through pieces of their tough-on-crime agenda under the cover of this national strategy.

According to the Department of Justice website, the seven initiatives include amendments that would “streamline” the process for securing authorization for wire-taps, potentially avoiding court orders or judge-issued warrants.

While the government claims the change is linked to potential investigations involving Aboriginal women, the initiative is actually a recycled portion of Bill C-31, allowing warrant-less wiretapping. The bill died last year when Harper prorogued Parliament.

Canada’s lack of consultation, transparency and relationship-building in this instance illustrates a glaring pattern concerning the Conservatives' policies toward Indigenous Peoples.

Upon taking power in 2006, the Stephen Harper government canceled the Kelowna Accord—a $5.1 billion strategy to improve Aboriginal health and water services, housing, and education. This, despite the reality that over a third of First Nations children live in overcrowded homes, and one in three First Nations people consider their main source of water unsafe to drink.

This move was the first in a series of cuts Harper would make to Aboriginal communities despite the optics of attempted reconciliation with First Peoples.

In 2007, Canada was one of only four countries to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In spite of a recent endorsement, some Aboriginal leaders believe Canada’s signature does not reflect a desire to honor Aboriginal people or their rights, but rather a need for good public relations.

And just two years after Harper’s apology to Aboriginal people for the residential school project and its legacy, the Conservatives cut funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF). The decision meant the end of significant funding to a Canada-wide network of 134 community-based healing initiatives addressing intergenerational trauma resulting from the schools.

The recent announcement by Minister Ambrose indicates that $4.65 million will go towards community and school-based programs to deal with cycles of violence and improve the safety of Aboriginal women in Aboriginal communities.

“While this focus on violence within Aboriginal communities is important, I think given the statistics we have seen, we also need to look beyond Aboriginal communities, at, for example, non-Aboriginal perpetrators who commit murder and acts of violence against Aboriginal women, like Robert Pickton,” Crowder said.

According to Amnesty International, Aboriginal women are almost three times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be killed by a stranger. In addition, 60 per cent of women and girls were killed in urban areas, 28 per cent in rural areas, and 13 per cent on-reserve.

There is also recognition within the Aboriginal community and among advocates that those in positions of power in Canadian society, in particular police and justice system officials, have themselves been accused and charged as perpetrators of violence against Aboriginal women.

Some view this as key to understanding Aboriginal women’s lack of trust in the justice system and their confidence in police protecting them from violence.

Last month former Attorney General Wally Oppal was hired to look into police investigations of the disappearances and murders of women, many of them Aboriginal, from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and why serial killer Robert Pickton was not charged after an incident in 1997.

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and Ernie Crey, whose sister’s DNA was found on the Pickton farm, issued a statement in October 2010, expressing their views about the Canadian justice system.

“Why were the lives of these and so many other Indigenous women in Canada not adequately supported, and how could our systems treat them, and others, as something to be thrown away, then put to the bottom of the heap in pursuing their murderers and abusers?”

With such mistrust in Canada’s justice system amongst First Nations leaders, advocates and Aboriginal women's groups, why is the Department of Justice now spearheading a campaign to end violence against Aboriginal women?

“Many of the family members are now thinking of reporting crimes less because they feel it won’t do anything anyways,” said Gladys Radek.

“I feel so sad for the families, the money needed to go towards their needs. They need their Healing Center. But they have been silenced again.”

Regardless of the funding allocation, NWAC has made a commitment to the families to continue to hold annual family meetings, work with families to share stories, convene community workshops and develop tools and resources.

According to an NWAC press released addressed to the families of missing and murdered women, “The movement and group of family members and community will remain under the Sisters in Spirit name.”

Meanwhile, Radek’s group Walk 4 Justice continues their work—spreading awareness, working with family members and communities to advocate for missing and murdered women, and urging the public to take action—with no government funding.

Angela Sterritt is a writer, artist and broadcast journalist based out of Vancouver, BC. She is from the Gitxsan Nation.

Erasing Sisters in Spirit

Science Fixin'?

hillarybain — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 05:14:52 +0000

Moratorium halts real-world geo-engineering experiments, for now

MONTREAL—Covering entire deserts with sun-reflecting plastics. Fertilizing oceans with iron to increase phyto-plankton growth and soak up carbon dioxide. Blasting sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere and installing massive mirrors in space to decrease incoming solar radiation to Earth.

What may seem like stories out of a science fiction novel are actually part of a new wave of “geo-engineering” technologies designed for large-scale scientific manipulation of natural systems. The goal: to slow down global temperature increases and mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.

But a growing tide of critics argue that geo-engineering technology is not only unproven, but may pose a grave threat to the planet. Its allure, according to Diana Bronson of the technology and environmental watchdog organization ETC Group, is that "techno-fixes" appear to offer a silver bullet solution to climate change—while allowing business as usual to continue.

“Geo-engineering is both a set of technologies and a drive political strategy,” said Bronson. “It is a way to let rich countries not take responsibility for their climate debt; it is a way to continue living the way we do in an energy intensive and unsustainable way and it is a way to continue pumping fossil fuels from the ground and into the atmosphere.”

In Japan in October, critics won a victory at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an intergovernmental convention of 193 nations. All parties to the CBD announced they would be adopting a “precautionary approach” to geo-engineering, and agreed to prohibit real-world geo-engineering experiments.

“The agreement basically is a moratorium," said Bronson. "It was a very hot issue and entered many late nights of negotiations, and the text that came out is a very compromised text. Nevertheless it is a very important step forward. This is the first time that any intergovernmental body has made a decision on geo-engineering.”

While the CBD moratorium prevents the real-world testing of technologies with potential global implications for life and biodiversity, it does not prevent investment or small-scale research in geo-engineering—and the Canadian government has shown interest in becoming an increasingly larger player.

“I don't think the Canadian public, or even Parliament, has any idea that the government of Canada has already invested in geo-engineering research,” said Bronson.

The CBD agreement has created a speed bump on the techno-fix superhighway.

“Essentially what the decision [in Nagoya] says is that until we understand the implications of geo-engineering on biodiversity, or until there is a regulatory framework in place to monitor and control such activities, no geo-engineering should take place,” said Jaime Webbe of the Montreal-based Secretariat of CBD.

Geo-engineering is typically divided into two main categories: technologies designed to limit incoming solar radiation to the earth, and technologies designed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. Both categories include everything from simple ideas—such as changing the colour of roads to better reflect sunlight—to seemingly more outlandish plans to spray sulfur—a byproduct of extractive industries such as the Alberta tar sands—into the upper atmosphere to emulate volcanic eruptions and limit incoming solar radiation.

Billionaires Bill Gates and Richard Branson have established multi-million-dollar funds to develop these technologies. Gates is the major benefactor of the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Resources, a $4.6 million fund managed in part by University of Calgary scientist David Keith, who researches and advocates geo-engineering.

While Keith agrees the CBD agreement is a positive step towards the creation of governance structure for how geo-engineering takes place, he, along with other scientists, also view it as a sign that the technology will eventually be implemented.

A major point of contention at the CBD talks in Japan was whether or not to include Carbon Capture and Storage technology (CCS) in the definition of geo-engineering. The final text excluded CCS from the definition—thereby allowing its real world use—with a footnote from Bolivia expressing disagreement and calling for “full consideration by the Conference of the Parties of [CCS] impacts on biodiversity in general.”

“There is a very complex debate that goes on around carbon capture and its relationship to geo-engineering, and it came to a head in Nagoya,” said Bronson. Excluding CCS from the definition of geo-engineering "was a compromise resulting from a number of countries negotiating together and some of those countries—including Canada and Norway—being very insistent that CCS not be included in the definition."

Henry Lau, spokesperson for Environment Canada, told The Dominion he disagreed.

“Carbon Capture and Storage is not a geo-engineering activity, because CCS provides a way to avoid emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," he said. "Geo-engineering activities attempt to modify interactions between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere; CCS methods store carbon dioxide underground.”

Much of the debate turns on the scope of the definition of CCS. Carbon capture includes a broad range of technologies, typically divided into two categories: those designed to capture tailpipe and smokestack emissions, and those designed to remove carbon from the atmosphere for storage. The latter include everything from tree plantations to artificially fertilizing the ocean to increase its capacity to sequester carbon. It also includes proposals such as constructing artificial trees that attempt to chemically replicate photosynthesis.

“Those [technologies] which pull carbon out of the atmosphere are definitely covered under the moratorium,” Bronson said. “That includes everything like ocean fertilization, synthetic trees and bio-char...but CCS is categorically excluded when it comes to carbon captured at source.”

Canada has invested heavily in this kind of research, development and implementation.

“The government of Canada is supporting Carbon Capture and Storage with substantial investments in large-scale demonstration projects,” said Micheline Joanisse, a spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN). She points to over $3 billion in funding for projects in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Colombia, including $466 million for CCS demonstration projects, as well as $151 million for research and development of new technologies.

A large portion of this funding has gone to the University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE). The ISEEE is a multi-disciplinary research organization, and one of the largest CCS research centres in the world. It is also where David Keith sits as Director of its Energy and Environmental Systems Group.

On its website the ISEEE lists its "collaborators," including major tar sands corporations such as Suncor, Total, Shell Canada, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It also lists the Pembina Institute—the sole NGO, the governments of Canada and Alberta, and the United States Department of Energy.

According to research by ETC group, over the past three years, Keith has received at least $150,000 in Canadian government funding for CCS technology research, specifically for inventing technologies designed to remove carbon from the atmosphere. According to a 2010 NRCAN report on the University of Calgary's funding for Carbon Capture and Storage, NRCAN, through the ISEEE, provided $50,000 to Keith’s research in 2008-2009.

On December 23, 2009, Keith filed a patent for a device that would involve “carbon dioxide capture systems and methods for the recovery of CO₂ from atmospheric air.” The patent describes how the invention could be implemented for the express purpose of generating environmental offsets, and creating carbon credits.

The same report states that in 2010 the federal government also awarded a $100,000 grant to Keith, along with Arvinder Pal Singh, Chief Technology Officer at Calgary-based Carbon Engineering, which describes itself as “an independent angel-funded company developing technologies to capture CO₂.” The grant is to develop CCS technologies for the direct capture of carbon from the atmosphere, technologies that, under the CBD moratorium, cannot be experimented with outside the laboratory.

Environmental critics like Greenpeace look at Canada’s investments in technologies like CCS as little more than a public relations strategy to cover up or distract from Canada’s international reputation as major polluter. They argue that CCS is not a solution and has no real impact on the root causes of climate change.

Low-tech CCS applications, such as bio-char and tree plantations for example, have critics worried about an upcoming “Earth grab.”

Bio-char is a process by which plant materials are burned in a low oxygen environment and buried to sequester carbon. Both bio-char and tree plantations require massive amounts of land, as well as monoculture crops of trees or bio-char. Used on a large scale, critics warn this could lead to the displacement of communities, the destruction of forests and the transformation of land to to produce biomass rather than food. Additionally, these sorts of solutions create an incentive for the genetic engineering of crops to be used for fuel and carbon storage. Similar trends have happened around biodiesel and tree plantations for biomass power production.

In Canada, a bio-char proposal has been submitted as part of the Alberta Offset Scheme, the government of Alberta’s carbon-trade-based plan for emissions reductions. According to a report from the United Kingdom-based Biofuel Watch, Keith Driver, one of the Alberta Offset System’s chief advisors, has been tapped to draft the International Bio-char Initiative's first set of standards.

In many ways, the debate over geo-engineering boils down to a debate between two models of dealing with climate change: continuing with business as usual, and transforming an unsustainable system of production and consumption.

As tar sands development continues, the Canadian government appears to be betting on business as usual. "I would not be surprised to see millions more dollars in the coming years poured into these 'climate technologies,'" said Bronson. "[These technologies] are more a distraction from emissions reduction than anything else.”

Cameron Fenton is a former intern and Membership Coordinator with The Dominion and a community organizer in Montreal.

Science Fixin?

November in Review, Part II

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:29:25 +0000

Climate bill killed in Senate, thesis filed in Mi'gmaw, apples preserved in BC?

Immigration police were barred from entering Toronto women's shelters, drop-in centres, rape crisis centres, group counselling homes and community organizations that treat abused women. "This is just one small step as part of a broader city campaign to make the city safer for women with undocumented or precarious immigrant status," said Fariah Chowdhury, an organizer with Shelter Sanctuary Status.

Over 130 migrant farm workers from Mexico and the Caribbean were cheated of thousands of dollars in pay after the owner of the Ontario farm they worked for filed an intent to get creditor protection. “What I don’t understand is how a farm that was known to have money problems can be part of the program," said farm worker Francis Gibson from Barbados. "We came here and worked hard and put money in the farmer’s pocket. But now we’re going home and our pockets are empty."

About 200 people marched to Parliament Hill on November 20 for Trans Day of Remembrance, commemorating trans- people who have been victimized by violence. Two were arrested during the dropping of a banner, which read "Remember Stonewall," a reference to a New York riot against police led by drag queens.

Canadian mining corporation Pacific Rim filed criminal charges against Salvadoran anti-mining activists in connection to a protest in 2006, which temporarily halted mining exploration at the Santa Rita mine in Cerro Limon.

Documents obtained by Postmedia News revealed that Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade have collaborated with industry partners to create an international lobbying strategy to promote the tar sands and discourage environmental protection legislation and policies in other countries.

Unelected Conservative senators in Ottawa killed Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, passed by a majority of elected MPs in Parliament. This marks the first time in 70 years that Senate has killed legislation from the Commons without debate.

Climate Justice Ottawa organizers conducted a sit-in in the rotunda inside the House of Commons in Ottawa in the run-up to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico. They called on the Canadian government to take strong action to combat climate change by shutting down the Alberta tar sands, cutting oil subsidies, investing in green, community-based climate change solutions and accepting the Cochabamba, Bolivia, Declaration as a negotiating framework at the Cancun UN Summit.

The Waycobah First Nation became the first community in Atlantic Canada to install an Elders Council to help guide the Band Council.

The Algonquins of Barriere Lake continued to agitate against the Department of Indian Affairs' attempt to abolish their traditional government, imposing an Indian Act electoral system on the community. Community representatives say the imposed Indian Act council, though lacking a chief, has been dealing with forestry companies and signing away their lands to be clear-cut without community consent.

A PhD student at York University filed his thesis in Mi'gmaw.

A PhD graduate, Masrour Zoghi, rejected his diploma at the University of Toronto's convocation ceremony, citing the university's increasing corporatization, pointing in particular to a large donation by Peter Munk, chairman of Barrick Gold. Barrick Gold is a Canadian mining company accused of a host of environmental and human rights abuses.

The Carleton University administration threatened to withhold funding to student groups in an attempt to pressure the student union to sign an agreement which would "enable the administration to overrule decisions on the internal spending of the student unions," according to Graduate Student Association President Kimalee Phillip.

In a wave of militancy that could help revitalise the labour movement in the US, hotel workers across the country mobilized in the thousands for better working conditions.

Haitian protesters barricaded the streets of Cap-Haïtien with coffins for three days to express their anger at the United Nations, whose Nepalese peacekeepers caused the cholera outbreak that has left, so far, 1,721 dead.

The day after Haitian elections, which excluded the country's most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, thousands protested the elections' legitimacy, accusing Jules Celestin, the candidate backed by outgoing president Rene Preval, of massive fraud. Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon called for "calm."

New Orleans police officers went on trial for the death of Henry Glover, whose corpse was allegedly lit on fire by police after they shot him. Twenty New Orleans police officers have been charged in recent months over "killings, assaults and fabrication of evidence during Hurricane Katrina."

Canada's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated the country will not attend next year's United Nations conference on racism, which he has deemed a "hatefest" and "anti-Semitic."

The Calgary Herald refused to publish the obituary of leading anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca on the one-year anniversary of his death. Abarca, a leading organizer against a barite mine owned by Calgary-based Blackfire Exploration Ltd's, was assassinated in Chicomuselo, Mexico. Former employees of Blackfire have been arrested in relation to Abarca's murder.

Seventy-six Canada Post workers in Winnipeg walked off the job to protest a new mail delivery method, which requires mail carriers to carry a second bundle of mail on their forearms, and which has caused injuries to skyrocket.

The Ontario Superior Court postponed social justice activist Jaggi Singh's constitutional challenge against his bail conditions stemming from G20 charges. The bail conditions include a ban on participating, organizing or attending "any public demonstration," which PEN Canada, an organization that campaigns for freedom of expression and an intervenor in his case, has said will do "nothing to ensure the safety of a single Canadian."

Whistle-blower organization Wikileaks began its release of over 250,000 diplomatic cables from 274 American embassies. Of these, almost 3,000 concern Canada, though only a handful of those released so far have mentioned the country. One cable dated from 2008 and sent from Washington sums up a meeting between former CSIS director Jim Judd and a US State Department official, in which Judd lambasts Canadian courts for their “Alice in Wonderland” worldview, which he claims has paralyzed CSIS, and criticizes Canadians for their “knee-jerk anti-Americanism” and “paroxysms of moral outrage.”

Canada's Privacy Commissioner warned that information about Canadian airline passengers on flights that do not touch American soil could be shared with American police and immigration officials under a new aviation safety program.

A British Columbia fruit company announced it has developed non-browning Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples. Critics warned against the genetically-modified fruit, which they say will support industrial farming and not address any consumer need.

CJO banner drop

Abarca memorial

Haiti's Void Vote

Moira Peters — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:11:00 +0000

No clear winners, many clear losers

"We denounce a massive fraud that is occurring across the country ... We demand the cancellation pure and simple of these skewed elections," the 12 presidential candidates, which included all main opposition groups, said in a statement read to reporters at a Port-au-Prince hotel. They accused the outgoing President Rene Preval's Inite (Unity) coalition of rigging the vote in favour of its candidate, Jules Celestin.
—Rory Carroll, reporting today, November 29, 2010, for The Guardian

This news is an unfortunate but not unexpected outcome of yesterday's presidential and legislative elections in Haiti. Crushed by the January 2010 earthquake and devastated by this month's cholera outbreak, the majority of Haitians couldn't vote for their preferred candidate, as the popular Famni Lavalas party was excluded from elections on a technicality.

Below, a collection of images and analyses of yesterday's election gives a limited view of the election's outcome; this week will be critical as election results will not be released until Sunday, December 5.

Unless otherwise indicated, the photos here were taken yesterday, November 28, 2010, during Haiti's presidential and legislative elections by Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste, a Haitian photojournalist.

Haiti Elections.Empty Polls

Prayers more hopeful

Haiti Elections.Police Van

Haiti Elections.Riot Cop

Haiti Elections.Voting in the Rubble

Haiti Elections.Voting in the Tent

Haiti Elections.Sign

Haitians to Refuse Tomorrow's "Selections"

Martin Lukacs — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 05:36:19 +0000

Living in tents, dying of cholera, the majority can't vote for their candidate anyway

HAITI, NOVEMBER 27—On the eve of presidential and legislative elections in Haiti, skepticism and disenchantment among Haitians is widespread.

"I am not going to vote," said Elause Jacques, a mother of two who runs a cyber cafe with her husband in Port-au-Prince. "I have no candidate."

Jacques' sentiment is shared by many Haitians, who may be turning away from the polls by the millions in an act of silent protest against the exclusion of Haiti’s popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas (FL), and the spending of millions on elections instead of badly needed healthcare and infrastructure.

The backdrop to the elections is grim: more than a million people remain homeless after the January earthquake, and now the country is confronted by a cholera epidemic that has already taken 1,500 lives.

FL has reiterated its position to boycott tomorrow's elections, after being excluded by Haiti’s Interim Election Commission (CEP), which is hand-picked by the government.

“It [FL] is not supporting any candidate, it doesn't have anybody representing it, and it is not sending anybody to represent it,” said the party in a statement. The statement also criticized the United Nations representative in Haiti, Edmund Mulet, for “having no respect for the Haitian people,” and President Rene Preval for running a "ungrateful hypocritical regime which has come to bury the memory of our ancestors.”

The CEP is facing other problems. In the days prior to the vote, many Haitians have still not received their electoral IDs.

“As President Aristide said, the November 28 elections will not be elections, but selections,” said a unidentified Haitian women, while waiting for her flight to Haiti from the Fort Lauderdale International Airport in Florida.

Former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, interviewed in mid-November by film-maker Nicolas Rossier in South Africa, where he is living under forced-exile, criticized the Haitian government and some of its international allies for betraying the Haitian people.

"When we say democracy we have to mean what we say,” said Aristide, who was deposed in 2004 by the United States, France and Canada. “Unfortunately, this is not the case for Haiti. They talk about democracy but they refuse to organize free and fair democratic elections. It is as if in the US they could organize an election without the Democrats."

Criticism of the exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas has been issued from some quarters.

In a letter sent to the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Congresswoman Maxine Water and 45 congress members urged the US government to ensure that the elections in Haiti are fair, free and democratic.

The letter called on the US government to "state unequivocally that it will not provide funding for elections that do not meet these minimum, basic democratic requirements."

The members of Congress recalled a previous CEP decision to exclude Fanmi Lavalas: "A previous CEP, with many of the same members, also excluded Fanmi Lavalas and other parties from Senatorial elections in April 2009. Haitian voters boycotted, and most observers estimated a three-to-six per cent voter turnout."

In a report to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Republican Senator Richard G. Lugar called on the Haitian government to reform the CEP.

Meanwhile, President Preval continues to appeal to Haitians to vote while reiterating his support for the CEP.

Eleven months after an earthquake ruined the capital and its surrounding areas, the situation remains dire. Several months after the first cases of cholera were discovered in the Down Central Plateau and Artibonite regions—one of Haiti's few agricultural centres—over 1,500 people have died and over 30,000 have been hospitalized. Haitians' already low trust in the United Nations troops has taken another hit, as mounting evidence indicates Nepalese forces were responsible for spreading the disease.

“Why spend all these millions for these elections while our people are dying from cholera?” said Haitian singer Lord Divers Morsa. “Why don’t we spend the money to buy anti-cholera shots or vaccines?”

Others question the priorities of President Preval and his support for Jude Celestin, the candidate of INITE or UNITY, Preval’s party.

“President Preval is using the state’s resources to back up Jude Celestin, his friend,” said Maude Salomon. “But he doesn’t care for people. Cholera is killing us, but Jude found millions of dollars to campaign.”

The international community has pledged several millions of dollars to organize the presidential and legislative elections. Yet critics point out that the same countries have disbursed only a fraction of the money that was pledged to rebuild the country after the January earthquake.

Another concern cited by critics is that the names of people who died during the earthquake remain as eligible voters on the CEP’s electoral list. This news was disclosed in a meeting in Washington by Chief of the Joint OAS-CARICOM (Organization of American States-Caribbean Community) Electoral Observation Mission in Haiti, Ambassador Colin Granderson. Many are asking the question: to whom will the CEP attribute the votes of dead Haitians?

A day before the elections, the mood seems to indicate that not many will vote tomorrow. And in the face of unfair elections and a growing health disaster, the prospects for the struggle for social justice and a state of law are likely to remain uncertain and fragile.

Wadner Pierre is a Haitian photojournalist who currently resides in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2007, he won a Project Censored Award for his investigative journalism work on the impact of media and corruption in military policies.

Haiti elections

November in Review, Part I

Tim McSorley — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 19:09:15 +0000

Christie Blatchford blocked, CEO salaries rocketed, non-profit bookstore raided

The Harper government blocked the development of a gold-copper mine on the traditional territory of the Tsilhqot'in Nation, but simultaneously announced they were greenlighting another gold project, the Mount Milligan mine in central British Columbia, on the traditional territory of the Nakazdli First Nation. Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the potential environmental impacts and damage to Fish Lake, sacred to the Tsilhqot'in, were the reasons for the Cabinet's rejection of the mine. The approved mine also falls in a sacred area and important watershed, and its development, in the face of resistance, is by no means assured.

Police raided Camas Bookstore in Victoria, BC, and seized two computers and documents. The Camas Educational Society is a not-for-profit registered society that functions collectively to operate the volunteer-run Camas Books and Infoshop. The Camas Collective was not told why the space was raided but a man has since been arrested. Police believe he sent an email from the bookstore's computer taking responsibility for vandalizing the mayor's house and car. The email expressed outrage at Mayor Fortin's removal of shelter beds in the city.

The Canadian government gave qualified endorsement to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, leaving the United States as the lone hold-out refusing to endorse the international human rights document that was more than 20 years in the making. The part of the statement that reads, "Canada can interpret the principles expressed in the Declaration in a manner that is consistent with our Constitution and legal framework" has critics worried that the government aims to impose limitations on the application of the Declaration.

A St. Thomas University student went public after being assaulted for entering a women's washroom on campus. The trans-student was punched in the face and called a "faggot." The student is calling for all buildings on the New Brunswick campus to be equipped with a gender neutral washroom.

A new report finds that 19-year-old Ashley Smith was restrained and forcibly injected with unnecessary tranquilizers and anti-psychotic drugs while in prison in New Brunswick. A few months later, in October 2007, the young woman strangled herself while in solitary confinement in an Ontario prison. The Smith family's lawyer is calling for an inquest into the last four years of Ashley's life, which she spent in federal custody.

Home-based daycare workers went on strike for a day, seeking secured paid vacations, a pension plan and better salaries. Government-subsidized home daycare workers in Quebec received the right to unionize in June 2009.

A new report has found that the rate of abuse in lesbian households is zero per cent. The paper found that not one of the 78 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian parents reported having been been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 per cent of American adolescents.

About 90 police officers in Toronto are facing a yet-to-be-determined penalty for not wearing their ID badges during the G20 summit in June. Chief of Police Bill Blair told CBC, "I believe some officers removed it so they would not be identifiable." About 1,100 people were arrested during the G20 summit weekend, but only 308 were charged and charges against about 100 have since been dropped. The cops' penalty may include the loss of one day's pay.

Canadian Angela James and American Cammi Granato became the first two women inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in its 67-year history.

Human rights experts denounced the gathering of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combatting Anti-Semitism (IPCCA) meeting in Canada, which claimed a new anti-semitism is surfacing in the form of criticism of the Israeli state. Critics argued that the IPCCA, and the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism, are attacking free speech by equating all criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. In addressing the IPCCA, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada will defend Israel "whatever the costs."

Under pressure from the US and NATO allies, Prime Minister Harper announced that the Canadian military would remain in Afghanistan until 2014 to train the local military and police, breaking a government promise to withdraw troops in 2011 and to hold votes in the House of Commons on any decision to extend the mission. The Liberal party had been calling on the Conservatives to commit trainers, 1,000 of which will stay on in Afghanistan, with details being finalized in a NATO meeting in Lisbon.

Taliban leadership called on the US Congress to send a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan to uncover what they call on-the-ground realities, including the fact that the US military has been overstating its military successes to prolong the war.

Journalists from over 60 countries signed a public letter of support for Wikileaks, praising the organization for its “outstanding contribution to transparency and accountability on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, subjects where transparency and accountability has been severely restricted by government secrecy and media control.”

Canadian CEO salaries rocketed 444 per cent from 1995 to 2007. In 2007, the country's top 10 CEOs made 330.3 million, up from 60.7 million in 1995.

Around 52,000 students protested in the streets of London, England, against government plans to cut university budgets by 40 per cent and to allow universities to nearly triple tuition fees. Some 200 students occupied the headquarters of the Conservative Party, the majority in the current coalition government. Labour unions announced they will organize protests with student groups against a wide range of government austerity measures this winter.

Protesters blocked Globe and Mail reporter Christie Blatchford from speaking at the University of Waterloo, locking themselves down on stage before Blatchford's talk. Blatchford—accused of racism towards Indigenous people over her reporting on the land rights conflict between Six Nations and the government near Caledonia, ON—is touring the country to promote her new book Helpless: Caledonia's nightmare of fear and anarchy, and how the law failed all of us.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board denied refugee status to US army deserter Joshua Key, a move that will allow Canada Border Services Agency to pursue his deportation.

Renowned doctor and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott warned that the 16,000 residents of Port Hope, Ontario, should be relocated during the "clean-up" of radioactive waste—a result of 50 years of radium and uranium refining at the Cameco refinery.

Student protest London 2010

Camas Bookstore