The Dominion - Women

For Their Own Good

taramichelle — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:29:26 +0000

Ontario’s legal legacy of the "moral" woman

MONTREAL—In 2004, Velma Demerson’s autobiography, Incorrigible was published as a testament to the degradation, abuse and torture of women incarcerated between the ages of 16 to 35 under Ontario’s Female Refuges Act, or FRA (1919-1958). She writes: "The seizure, stigma and family turmoil that ensued from confining a woman in prison passes down through the generations."

In the 1930s, female adolescents like Demerson were liberating themselves and growing up at a time when customs were coming apart. “Imagine what it was like at the turn of the century, where for the first time, women are starting to flock to cities like Toronto and are experiencing autonomy, they are mobile, earning their own wages and are able to purchase some degree of autonomy...” states Dr Amanda Glasbeek, professor at York University and expert on feminist criminology and Canadian women's legal history.

In 1991, Demerson was invited to speak at an annual general meeting hosted by the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS)—a federation of member societies who work with and on behalf of marginalized, victimized, criminalized, and imprisoned women and girls.

Demerson spoke of her incarceration at age 18, in 1939, at the infamous Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Females in Toronto. At the time, Demerson was a white, working-class teenager, living in a common-law relationship with Harry Yip, a Chinese national. Demerson was pregnant with his child when she was brought to court by her father, who opposed the union on racist grounds. Demerson was charged with being “incorrigible”—an offence not found in the Criminal Code. The judge denied her plea to marry Harry and remanded her to be sentenced under section 15 of the Female Refuges Act.

Dr Glasbeek, the author of Moral Regulation and Governance in Canada: History, Context and Critical Issues, explains, “‘Incorrigible’ meant that if a woman was considered defiant of authority she could be brought to court with no evidence required.”

The intrusion of the law in the form of the FRA was symptomatic of a broader movement in the 1930s to try to contain and detain women from themselves—political and legal reformers saw women as “trading in their virtues for what they called a good time,” explains Dr Glasbeek. As a result, this kind of so-called protective justice was deployed to discipline women from stepping out of their role and was deemed for their own good. “The concern was very specific, increasingly the blame for sexual liberties got transferred to women—and women were not deemed the best judges of their own sexuality,” states Dr Glasbeek.

After uncovering legal and medical archives and old newspapers that prompted her own investigation, Demerson stated, “I found that [under FRA] a neglected girl could enter an industrial or training school without appearing before a magistrate. She could be transferred to an industrial refuge and again to the Mercer Reformatory. A girl could wind up in a barred cell without having been in court.”

It just so happened that, at the time, the Canadian Social Hygiene Council was involved in promoting Eugenics as a mechanism for social reform and racial improvement. According to CAEFS, this resulted in the casual round up of thousands of women for incarceration after legislation passed in 1918 under the Prevention of Venereal Diseases Act (VD Act)—a campaign brought on by the Council, later known as the Health League of Canada.

The VD Act granted government-appointed doctors the authority to incarcerate women depicted as promiscuous and assumed to have contracted a venereal disease, women raped by a family member (or accused of incest), women feared to be queer or those suspected of eloping by her parents.

Government-funded agencies such as the Associated Children’s Aid Society of Ontario (OACAS), a program that began operating in 1920, targeted women living out of wedlock, confiscating their children as wards of the state.

Doctors used these women in custody to assess new drugs being developed. Velma’s pregnancy was threatened when she was given pills now identified as Pheniramine, Sulphanilamide and Dagenan—all forms of antibiotic and antibacterial drugs that have heavy sedative effects. Dagenan is no longer used to treat humans.

Women who displayed no symptoms of VD were sent to the Queen Street Asylum (also referred to as “999 Queen Street” and now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) for fever treatment; some were placed inside a cabinet or “fever machine” where the temperature was raised to over 105 degrees for long lengths of time.

Demerson’s newborn son suffered from severe skin disease as a result of the experiments. He was removed from the Mercer without consent from Demerson, who writes in her book: “What can one say in the brutal atmosphere of the Mercer where each person is obsessed with her own personal trauma?”

Dr Edna Guest, a physician at the Mercer Reformatory from 1921 to 1939, was a distinguished member of the Canadian Social Hygiene Council and contributed to the Social Health Journal, where she strongly, publicly supported the “sterilization of the unfit.”

Dr Glasbeek confirms that the medical experiments conducted on "incorrigible" women and Mercer inmates by Dr Guest and others were “not far in theory and technology from the Eugenics movement” of the 1930s in Nazi Germany.

Demerson recounts one such experiment: “I watch as she [Dr Guest] opens and closes a metal box...Suddenly I feel a pain so encompassing that I lose all control. My hands tear loose and I flail about...then with one swift motion, the doctor applies a burning liquid.”

Dr Guest was removed from her position with the Prisons and Reformatories Department on December 15, 1939—after carrying out a procedure that resulted in the death of an unidentified young female patient. CAEFS has found increasing evidence that many girls died from drug and fever treatments, but their deaths have not been recorded, partially due to the cover-up of medical records.

Ashley Smith's suicide on October 19, 2007, at the Grand Valley Institution for Women signals a nostalgic flashback to the abusive history of morality sentencing against Canadian women. Nineteen-year-old Smith strangled herself after a one-month sentence for "disruptive behaviour" that stretched into four years of incarceration, spent entirely in solitary confinement.

Although CAEFS was primarily responsible for the repeal of the offensive provisions of the FRA in 1958, women and girls continue to suffer abuse in Canadian federal penitentiaries. Ashley Smith died within the law and we learn from Velma’s memoirs that during her confinement at the Mercer, she too often resolved to die: “My deviation from normal behavior has undoubtedly been reported. I am being watched, more so since my escape, apparent attempted suicide, and hysterical screaming. I am only a step away from madness.”

On Novemeber, 23, 2011, Howard Sapers, Correctional Investigator of Canada, spoke at an open seminar at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law. He concluded by stating,“Ashley Smith’s experience in federal custody was one marked by missed opportunities. Her behaviour was primarily viewed as requiring security, as opposed to therapeutic interventions. Responses to incidents of self-harm were inconsistent and often contrary to her needs...while some improvements have been made, the accountability and governance structures that contributed to Ashley’s untimely death are still largely in place today.”

Sapers's report was a lengthy response to heavy criticism from human rights groups, including CAEFS, and after the public release of a ghastly video recording of Ashley’s suicide while in federal custody at the Grand Valley Institution for Women on October 19, 2007.

This year marks 10 years since Demerson finally cleared her name at age 81. At a national press conference on October 7, 2002, after 60 years of virtually no response or official apology, a negotiated settlement with the Ontario Government was reached and the Female Refuges Act was declared unconstitutional.

Demerson has been a tireless advocate for women illegally confined across Canada and now, in her 90s, she resides in Toronto. She received the JS Woodsworth Award for anti-racism from the Ontario NDP Caucus in 2002, on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

While Smith’s case renewed public interest in community-based alternatives for addressing women’s needs, Demerson and countless other women continue to live with the legacy of the FRA—a law that engendered contradictions, double standards and gender oppressions within a patriarchal culture that saw itself as a force for social change.

Dalia Merhi is a Montreal-based Arab artist, writer and citizen journalist involved in grassroots struggles for social justice. She is an editor with the Media Co-op.

Velma and Family

The Strength to Carry on

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:49:20 +0000

Residential school survivor speaks out as part of In Our Own Voices writing project

The stories that make up the In Our Own Voices writing project are the fruits of weeks of exercises, workshops, drafts and revisions. They are personal stories, written by members of the Power of Women Group, who organize out of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

These are stories of incredible hardship, resistance, struggle, courage, and resilience; of grappling with and sometimes overcoming fear, addictions, abuse, and illness; and of persistent state violence and racism, dealt liberally and frequently, and usually without a modicum of justice.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. In the place of fragments, a passing nod at a rally or a quick hello on the street, readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women.

—Dawn Paley

VANCOUVER—I was six years old when I was taken away from my parents and grandparents in Ahousat, BC and forced into a residential school. The Department of Indian Affairs came to our reserve every year in the 1950s, taking Native children away and placing them in residential schools to learn the White way of life.

In residential schools, under the federal policy of “aggressive assimilation,” we were stripped of our language, our culture, and our customs. We had to scrub ourselves clean until we were White. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 Native children were removed from our communities and forced to attend residential schools, with the last school closing only as recently as 1996.

I was forced to attend the Christie Indian Residential School and then the Mission City St. Mary’s Residential School. I felt like I was in a concentration camp. In these schools, we were punished for speaking our language. Our punishment was being kept in isolation in a dark room for the whole day. Often we would be fed food from the garbage and be forced to drink raw cow milk. We were strapped and beaten until we were too sore to stand.

If we did not get up on time in the mornings, the nuns would drag us across the floor, beat us, and make us go without breakfast. I remember every morning they would wake us up by saying: “You are not on the reserve; you are in White Man’s land. Indians are liars, filthy and good for nothing. You don’t want to live like an Indian.”

When we were silent, they made us talk. But when we talked, they did not like what we had to say and persistently hit us while repeating: “God doesn’t like you talking like that.” We were too scared to do anything. We would often go without food and there would be no activities. At nighttime we would often see the children taken out of their dorm rooms and they would come back crying and bleeding.

I was incredibly lonely in the residential schools. The priests and nuns did not like us making friends with each other. Even brothers and sisters were kept apart and forced to act like strangers with one another. From the time I was placed in residential schools, I did not have a single kind word said to me. No one appreciated me for the individual I was, or the culture I came from.

All I remember is being punished for anything and everything. I still have horrible flashbacks. I grew up with a tremendous amount of shame and loss of dignity. I believe that residential schools were prisons for young children.

I managed to get out of residential school earlier than the other children because one day my brother managed to sneak a phone call to my grandparents and told them to come get me. The nuns had beaten me so badly across my head with a stick and a ruler that my ears would not stop bleeding. My grandparents got me out of the school for a special doctor’s visit. The doctor determined that I had permanently lost my hearing in both ears. My grandparents were furious and kept me at home, refusing to send me back to the residential school. When the school called the Indian band office looking for me, my grandparents told the school and the Indian agents that the nuns had given me a severely damaged ear. The officials hung up the phone and did not try forcing me back.

When I was older, I moved to the Downtown Eastside. Almost 60 per cent of Native people and 72 per cent of Native women now live in urban settings with the erosion of the land base of our communities and Indian Act regulations limiting women’s access to housing on the reserves. I, too, drifted here from the Island and found work at a fish plant. Since then, this neighbourhood has become my permanent home.

Like me, most people here carry deep scars. It is hard to describe all the different experiences that women have, for example the history of abuse that has brought many of us here to the DTES, the brutality of child apprehensions that many of us have borne as a direct result of poverty, the fact that many of us do not know our parents because of the legacy of residential schools and colonization has destroyed our families, the chronic and often fatal illnesses such as AIDS and Hepatitis C that break our bodies, the grief of living through the deaths of our missing and murdered sisters, and much more. People who drive by us every day to work have no idea what nightmares we live with. My heart wants to shatter when I hear some of the stories about why people have turned to drugs and alcohol.

The Downtown Eastside is the poorest part of town. Low-income housing in the DTES is of such sub-standard quality that many prefer to sleep on the streets. Problems in the single-room occupancies include: absence of heat, toilets, and running water; presence of mold, bedbug infestations and rats; and illegal practices by landlords including refusal to return damage deposits, entering rooms without permission, and arbitrary evictions.

In the DTES Power of Women Group, we support our people to get proper homes. The government should provide a living wage and a decent home for all people so that we have somewhere to stay and so that no one has to work the street. A lot of our young people are working for drug dealers. Women who owe drug debts have much harm come to them, sometimes even death, like the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Machisknic last year. A lot of girls who have to work in the sex-trade are further abused by their clients and their pimps and often don’t get paid.

And then there is the constant harassment on the street by police officers. I have seen officers walk by and kick people while they are passed out or sleeping on the street. Our people are not able to defend themselves against guns and tasers. It hurts me to see people slammed to the pavement by police officers just because they are poor and nobody cares what happens to poor people.

But the hidden truth of the Downtown Eastside is that despite the poverty, criminalization, and trauma, we all care for each other and socialize with one another. Especially in the DTES Power of Women Group, where we are like one family and support the community on issues such as police brutality, child apprehensions, violence against women, and housing. Whether people are sober or high on drugs, we listen to each other’s dreams and desires to make this neighbourhood a better place for ourselves.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. Readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women. This story is part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, click here.

Stella August, from the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, was born in 1945 in Ahousat, BC. She is a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside. When she joined the DTES Power of Women Group she learnt that as a woman in this neighbourhood, she has a voice and a collective group through which to support her people. She is also a member of the Feb 14th Womens’ memorial march Committee.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and organizer with the Vancouver Media coop, where the full version of her introduction can be read. Stories from In Our Own Voices can be read on the VMC.

POW members at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre

The Downtown East side Power of Women Group Present In Our Own Voices Writing Project

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

As Global Citizens We Should All Care About Water

Paula LaPierre — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:39:35 +0000

Fredericton rallies together for women of Afghanistan

Tracy Glynn — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:21:01 +0000

FPS-RAWA 011.jpg

Fredericton rallies together for women of Afghanistan
March 24, 2009
By Jessi MacEachern

This past Saturday, people of the Fredericton community gathered together for a cause that hits hard locally, but is in fact dedicated to communities nearly 10,000 kilometres away.

The Fredericton Peace Coalition, the UNB/STU University Women’s Centre, NB RebELLEs-Fredericton, and CUSO-VSO joined together to host Fredericton’s third Annual Benefit for the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA).

RAWA began in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1977 under the leadership of Meena, an activist who was eventually assassinated for her advocacy against Afghanistan’s fundamentalist forces.

Today, RAWA continues to thrive as a political and social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy, and women’s rights. Knowing freedom and democracy can never be donated, what is needed from members of a community like Fredericton is solidarity and support.

Saturday’s lineup brought local talent to the auditorium stage of the Charlotte Street Arts Centre. The evening started off with a reception of free beverages and finger foods, accompanied by the soothing musical notes of Mark Currie, Tom Whidden, Brian Calder, and Matt Leger.

As these first musicians played, guests were encouraged to bid on the silent auction items displayed along one side of the room—a collection of art supplies, reading materials, tea sets, jewelry, kids’ items, gift certificates and more, entirely donated by the greater Fredericton community.

"And Then Let's Go For That Justice" Part II

hillarybain — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:22:02 +0000

Indigenous women demand respect in Ottawa

In honour of missing and murdered indigenous women, the Walk4Justice began in Vancouver on June 21, Aboriginal Day, and ended with a rally of about 250 on Parliament Hill on September 15.

The following article (part two in a series) explores the profound systemic flaws discussed during speeches at the rally; flaws that continue to encourage a deep-rooted Canadian prejudice against indigenous women, which is being supported by the 2010 Olympic Games and Canada's oil economy, specifically the Alberta Tar Sands.

Part one of this article can be read here.

MONTREAL – When it comes to women losing their homes, Alberta and BC are among the worst in Canada.

Alberta’s "successful" tar sands economy has created a severe lack of affordable housing, transitional housing and shelter spaces, particularly for women.

Women are often dissuaded from pursuing the resources and abilities essential to benefiting from the booming industry. Unequal wages, gender discrimination and sexual harassment are all significant deterrents. Those profiting most from the oil and gas workforce are predominantly male; current male-female ratios are 79 to 21 per cent for geoscientists and 96 to four per cent for trades.

Contributing to this imbalance is the fact that the exorbitant cost of rent makes it next to impossible for many women in Alberta to afford a home, unless their wages can compete with those in the oil industry.

In the oil town of Fort McMurray, where the housing crisis is rampant, none of the shelters accept minors. A report released by the region's Homelessness Initiatives Steering Committee found that some teenagers are resorting to sex-work in exchange for shelter for a night.

For those women who do manage to find a shelter, Alberta has no transitional housing program. As a result, there is often nowhere for them to go from a shelter, except back to the street.

“A longer-term transition house is what is needed, one that can be used for as long as people need. A house that has passion for the survival of a whole generation to get past this terrible point of life, in which they did not mean to live,” says Nicole Tait, a youth attending the Walk4Justice rally.

Under the Harper Conservatives, cuts to legal aid and income assistance, the closure of women's centres, political assaults on women's advocacy and support services, a lack of childcare support, cuts to welfare and changes to eligibility for welfare, the rising cost of living, and low-income work all contribute heavily to the significant disadvantage that many First Nations women face. The BC Human Rights Commission and Ministry of Women's Equality, both considered tools to fight discrimination, have also been eliminated.

The number of homeless in Vancouver doubled in 2005 and is predicted to triple due to the 2010 Olympic Games. These figures do not account for a much larger population that pays for sub-standard housing. According to the 2005 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count, there are 300,000 (official) homeless in Greater Vancouver, 30 per cent of whom are First Nations people, despite the fact that they make up just two per cent of the city's total population.

An endless host of Canadian development projects, from massive tar sands extraction sites to ventures intended to facilitate the 2010 Games, have rendered homeless many First Nations people who originally subsisted on their traditional territories or on government-assigned reserves. Many are compelled to move to large urban centres in search of work or to escape their consequently depressed communities.

The same pattern of forced displacement of First Nations communities and individuals is happening all over Canada.

For example, in Alberta, Indigenous people living on reserves close to tar sands plants, residing downstream from tailings ponds, or dwelling on land slated to accommodate government pipelines have a hard battle to fight: against health problems of all kinds – including soaring rates of cancer which are picking off their friends and family members at an alarming pace – and against a government that is constantly attempting to push them farther off of their land for the purpose of extraction and exploration. Many of these people, such as those in the northern Alberta communities of Fort Chipewyan and Fort MacKay, are fighting to stop the pollution and destruction of their homes, some are deriving what benefit they can from jobs in the tar sands industry, and others are leaving their reserves with little or no money to attempt a better life in Edmonton, Calgary, or Fort McMurray.

Similarly, the Olympic Games are acting as an unwelcome catalyst for many First Nations people living in BC, a number of whom have been embroiled in bitter land rights battles with the Canadian government for most of their lives. Rivers, mountains, lakes, creeks, and old-growth forests, along with trap lines, hunting grounds, salmon stocks, animal habitats, sacred sites, and important food and medicine harvesting areas are being substituted by tourist resorts and highway expansions, like the Sea-to-Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler. With vast areas of unceded land, on which indigenous communities depend for their general survival, being destroyed, many First Nations people have been, and continue to be, drawn into cities to seek out new modes of subsistence, often only to discover that they lack the resources necessary to make a living in foreign urban surroundings.

The Secwepemc people of Skelkwek'welt and the St'at'imc people of Sutikalh have long resisted the establishment of Sun Peaks and Cayoosh ski resorts (intended to attract and accommodate tourists, Olympic athletes and trainers) on their land. Powerful and well-thought-out demonstrations of their opposition have been disregarded, ignored and covered-up by the BC government in attempts to profit from a territory for which treaties were never signed.

Native Youth Movement (NYM) member Kanahus Pelkey of the Secwepemc and Ktunaxa First Nations recalls the tactics employed by Sun Peaks to facilitate the construction of their ski resort:

The province bulldozed our home on International Human Rights Day. They hired Sun Peaks employees to tear down our sweat lodges. So you get an idea what happens when Native people stand up and fight for their freedom. We announced it to the media, and all the corporate media, they showed up at Sun Peaks, but the roads were deactivated. They [Sun Peaks] made big, huge ice blockades so no vehicles could get through. And Sun Peaks resort has many, many snowmobile businesses, but all the businesses were given orders by Sun Peaks not to rent any snowmobiles to any media, or anybody that day.

The Secwepemc people, rendered homeless and faced with the threat of arrest if they continued living on their land, retreated, some to Vancouver. Many had endured previous arrests for similar involvements and did not want to risk imprisonment with no chance of bail.

First Nations women living in the city are more susceptible than men to losing their homes due to abuse or conflict with a spouse or caretaker upon whom they are financially dependent. Because women are more likely to have children to look after, and are less likely to feel safe on the street or in shelters where men are also present, many return to abusive relationships when there is no alternative available.

Across Canada, there are more women among the Aboriginal homeless population than are found in the non-Aboriginal population. According to Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), 35 per cent of the Aboriginal homeless population in Greater Vancouver is female, compared to only 27 per cent among the non-Aboriginal homeless population.

First Nations women are also vastly overrepresented in Canada’s community of sex-workers, and continue to be brutally criminalized by the police and simultaneously marginalized and taken advantage of by society in general.

In 2003, Pelkey, forcibly separated from her baby boy, spent two-and-a-half months in prison for her involvement with the Sun Peaks protests. During her incarceration, she met many First Nations women who had been imprisoned for sex-work and drug abuse. Most of the women's stories involved sexual molestation during childhood. Many women had experienced these abuses in residential schools, while others were the children of residential school survivors.

Aboriginal rights lawyer and President of the NWAC Beverly Jacobs stresses that often police lack an understanding of the cycles of abuse that occur within Native communities, and, as a result, do not possess the empathy necessary to view women on the streets as part of the public. As such, they do not feel responsible for the protection of these women. Jacobs has worked with Amnesty International as a lead researcher and consultant on their report “Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada.”

The controversial BC Coalition of Experiential Communities (BCCEC), the first sex-worker co-operative in Canada, is the brainchild of sex-worker Susan Davis, who has been trying to pressure the government to create legal brothels for the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010. Despite the decriminalization of sex workers being one of the BCCEC's primary motives, the issue is contentious both among Canada's political elite and among sex-workers themselves. The move had the support of Vancouver’s then-Mayor, Sam Sullivan, and VANOC (the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games), but has so far been refused by Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

Tait finds it difficult to understand sex-workers who support the move, and does not envision the legalization of brothels solving the problem of police brutality and societal marginalization.

“They are [Vancouver is] basing their research on one woman’s point of view for creating [legal] brothels in the DTES [Downtown Eastside]. This woman [Davis] is a prostitute by choice who doesn't have to make a living from the streets. She says that she enjoys what she does. I never met one woman who said that they enjoy being a prostitute, they say that’s just the way things happened. Others are trying to make a living for their family, which includes young mothers who are trying to put food on the table for their babies.”

Tsimshian youth, co-ordinator of North Coast Enviro Watch and member of Native 2010 Resistance Dustin Johnson notes that the Olympic tradition of catering to the elite as a means of social control can be referred to as a policy of "sex, screens and sports," a phrase coined to describe the 1988 Seoul Games. A massive influx of prostitution, coupled with the pseudo-legalization of the sex industry for the benefit of elite athletes and businessmen, has always been an Olympic norm.

Johnson maintains that not all sex-workers even made a career choice to begin with.

"You actually see, at some of the elementary schools in Vancouver, sexual predators, just waiting around to try to kidnap young Native kids. Some of these kids end up in the sex-slave industry, they get shipped all over the world. This is the kind of industry that VANOC and the people that are organizing the Olympics in Vancouver are trying to continue.”

Jacobs, too, stresses that the issue of violence against Aboriginal peoples in general and Aboriginal women in specific is not a three-decade concern, but instead extends to the past 300 years. The crisis is one of historic proportions. A report she wrote for the Native Women's Association of Canada looked to the history of colonization, and how it has affected Aboriginal women.

“Because a lot of First Nations cultures were matriarchal, women have suffered the brunt of colonization,” says Jacobs.

Her studies reveal that white policymakers noted the remarkable strength of First Nations women, and found ways of demeaning it. Despite the fact that many clans, and by extension, the status of individuals, were once determined matrilineally, the Canadian government’s invention of the status card changed this: status became determined by the male alone, creating a severe disconnect between Native people and their cultures. The previously significant responsibility of men to act as protectors was also adversely affected by this forced shift, creating internal oppression in First Nations communities that is still very present today.

“The responsibilities and the roles that come with being a Native woman are very highly respected, or at least they were. [First Nations people are] still having to deal with the issues internally within our communities because we’ve learned those patriarchal values and we’ve learned them really well,” observes Jacobs.

About half-way through the colourful roster of speeches on Parliament Hill, one of Prime Minister Harper’s aids came to formally accept the women’s documented demands. Dressed all in grey, he gripped the bright pink folder firmly, saying, “I will deliver this to Mr. Harper” as the crowd murmured their skeptical thanks.

But Akwesasne Elder and Bear Clan mother Harriet Boots quickly brought people back to the core of the matter.

“Every person today has a lot of tears. Let’s make it our strength. Let’s go ahead and cry. Take it all out of our system. And then let’s go for that justice.”

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie is a freelance journalist, creative writer, and barista living in Montreal.

An original version of this article was published by Oil Sands Truth (Fall 2008 print issue).

Missing women's memorial, Vancouver, 2007

Missing Women

"And Then Let's Go for that Justice" Part I

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:47:13 +0000

The Walk4Justice

This article is part one of two on the Walk4Justice.

OTTAWA – It was hard to miss the giant Mohawk and Iroquois flags painting the parliament buildings with their splashes of red, yellow, brown and blue. On September 15, a crowd of about 250 was gathered in Ottawa for the Walk4Justice Rally. Even at ten a.m., there was a strong, shocking feeling of possibility in the air. This feeling would only grow as the five-hour stretch of speeches progressed, making parliament feel much more like a sacred village square.

According to a Canadian government statistic, young Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence. In honour of missing and murdered indigenous women, the Walk4Justice began in Vancouver on June 21, 2008, Aboriginal Day. Many First Nations women, men and children participated from across the country, walking for 87 days, ending in Ottawa on September 15.

The journey began with a vigil at the notorious Pickton farm site, where confessed serial killer Robert Pickton murdered 30 women (many of whom were sex-workers from Vancouver, and a third of whom were Native).

Among the many powerful speakers at the rally in Ottawa was a group of First Nations women who have devoted their lives to unpaid, front-line work with women living in Vancouver’s poverty-stricken Downtown East Side (DTES).

Bernie Williams is a front-line worker, residential school survivor, and Matriarch in the House of the Raven. She spoke of a lack of support for the Walk from Vancouver as well as a less than smooth experience along the way.

"It’s been a long walk and a very emotional one. I would be lying to you if I said that everything was all rosy out there on this journey. It hasn’t been. Since we left BC, we’ve been followed. One of our women has been stalked...We have compiled names all through the nation, all through your territories. We’ve added another three more in the last couple of days."

The Walkers began with a list of 500 — a rough estimate of the number of missing and murdered First Nations women in Canada over the last three decades (76 of whom were from the DTES), and by the time they arrived in Ottawa, they had compiled a list of 3,000 women. Upon their arrival, there were three more women to add to the list, two of whom are teens from nearby Maniwaki recently found to be missing.

The aim of the Walk was to deliver the list of names to the Canadian government and demand public inquiries into the many violent deaths.

Also present at the rally was Aboriginal rights lawyer and president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), Beverly Jacobs, from the Mohawk Nation Bear Clan in Six Nations Grand River. Jacobs has worked with Amnesty International as a lead researcher and consultant on their report "Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada." One of the many recommendations included in the report was that Canada should support research into the causes of violence against Indigenous women. There are currently no statistics on the number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, only estimates. She noted that although Canada is aware that reports have been done, many have been shelved or ignored.

Seventy-four-year-old Mabel Todd, who has seen four of her family members disappear, participated in the entire walk, making it clear that she would not be ignored.

Cecilia, an Elder from Tofino, BC, cried while speaking of her missing granddaughter, Lisa Marie, who disappeared in 2002.

"My daughter and I have a candle vigil every year, the day she went missing. We light candles, give out posters, T-shirts, hoping that somebody will see. Who knows what happened to her."

Richie Dominic walked for his aunt, Ramona Wilson, who went missing in 1994 at the age of 16 on BC’s now infamous Highway 16. After ten months, her remains were found, but no one has been held accountable to this day, and there are countless cases just like hers.

"Justice would mean a final bit of closure," says Dominic. "This is what we need [pointing at the crowd]. We need numbers. We need to show Canada that we do care. That the country does care."

The speakers, who ranged from youth to Elders in their nineties, emphasized the fact that most of the cases they were addressing had not been taken very seriously by police or the media. When the missing or murdered women happen to be sex-workers, they are taken even less seriously and their disappearances or deaths are rarely, if ever, investigated to the point of resolution.

In a radio interview, Jacobs cites the case of Pamela George as an example of prevalent attitudes that act as obstacles to justice.

George was a 28-year-old mother of two who struggled with poverty and occasionally worked the sex-trade in Regina. She was murdered in 1995 by two white, male university students who picked her up, beat her severely and left her by the side of the road.

Testimony at the trial indicated that the two men had attempted to pick up another Indigenous woman before they had encountered George. The woman testified that when she had refused to go with them they had called her "Indian trash" and a "squaw slut."

According to a friend of one of the killers who also testified, one of the young men later bragged about picking up an "Indian hooker," saying "She deserved it. She was an Indian."

The case was tried before a white judge and all-white jury. The men were each sentenced to a short six years in prison. According to Amnesty’s Stolen Sisters Report, little attention was paid to the victim throughout the trial; her sex-work was the main focus. The Crown prosecutor told the jury to consider the fact that she was a prostitute, "far-removed from them," and the judge told them to bear in mind her profession when they considered whether or not she had consented to sexual activity. A Court of Appeal decision briefly considered the prosecutor and judge’s comments and concluded they "were not made for the purpose of conveying a negative view of the victim to the jury."

Amnesty International expressed concern that comments of this type might reflect social attitudes faced by sex-workers in general, and Indigenous sex-workers in particular.

Jacobs cites the case of Helen Betty Osbourne as an example of the attitudes of many police authorities, also standing in the way of justice.

Osborne was a Cree woman, kidnapped and murdered by four white men in 1971. A Manitoba Justice Inquiry later concluded that the Canadian Justice Authorities had failed Osbourne, and criticized a "sloppy, racially biased investigation" that took over 15 years, and brought only one man to justice. The inquiry concluded that police had long been aware of who had been responsible for the murder.

Thirty-three years later, when Osborne’s cousin was murdered, the police reaction was similar. According to the young woman’s family, officers showed up at two a.m., interrogated everyone present, and searched their home. It was only six weeks later, when the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) held a press conference, that an investigation finally commenced. The former pow-wow dancer’s body was eventually found.

Walker Brenda Wilson explains why many families of victims eventually give up on police and the media:

"There’s a lot of barriers to face in finding your loved one. You have to prove to the authorities that your loved one is missing, that they didn’t just run away. And you also have to prove to them that they’re not all the same case…They each are an individual person, and they each have different cases…They need to be individuals, because when they left this world, they were individuals."

Wilson points out that many missing and murdered First Nations women have been stuck with the same label, which reads: "Highway of Tears," and not given much more thought. More than 30 women have gone missing or been found murdered on BC’s Highway 16 in the past 30 years. The RCMP has confirmed four murders and five disappearances linked to the Highway of Tears, only one of whom was non-Native.

Many families are very angry about how they have been treated by police, and object to having to wait a year or more in some cases for investigations to commence, if they do at all.

Seeing little progress in police investigations, BC private investigator Ray Michalko, a former RCMP officer, started probing into the cases at his own expense in 2006. Michalko has had to contend with numerous warnings from RCMP that he could be charged with obstruction of justice if he does not "tread carefully," almost ending his investigations more than once.

Walker Gladys Radek describes how front-line workers stand in for both police and media on a daily basis. Radek, like Bernie Williams, works front line in the DTES with homeless and poverty-stricken women, many of whom work in the sex-trade for survival.

"Families have approached us before they even go to the police. I remember families walking up to Bernie on the street: Have you seen my daughter, Have you seen my son? This is the kind of work she does and everybody knows it. She doesn’t get paid for what she does. None of us get paid for what we do. We work from our heart.”"

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie grew up in the woods and hopes to make it back there at some point. She currently studies life and works from Montreal.

The original version of this article was published in Oil Sands Truth (Fall 2008 print issue).

Walkers 4 Justice on Parliament Hill in Ottawa

Crowd Members at the Walk4Justice in Ottawa

Reproductive Rights STILL an Election Issue

Anna Carastathis — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:23:57 +0000

focus on the born.jpg

"Focus on the Born": Image from a demonstration against Bill C-484, The Unborn Victims of Crime Act

When it became clear that an imminent election was in the stars, Harper distanced himself from the widely opposed Bill C-484, The Unborn Victims of Crime Act.

Now infamous, Bill C-484 was a private member bill introduced by Ken Epp (MP for Edmonton Sherwood Park, Alberta). It assigned legal personhood to unborn fetuses (in contravention of the Criminal Code). It was denounced by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), and other feminist organizations, as "an unconstitutional infringement on women’s rights." Similar laws are used in the United States to criminalize pregnant women who use drugs or alcohol for endangering the fetus, or to prosecute those who help them seek abortions.

While Epp refused to drop the Bill, which had passed its second reading, Harper vowed not to reopen the "debate" on abortion. (A promise, incidentally, that he has made before, during the 2004 election, and again in January 2005.)

But does that mean that reproductive rights are no longer an election issue?

Quite the opposite, according to the ARCC. Harper has said that he would not block private member bills about abortion (like C-484) in future.

In fact, on this issue, he has said he would lift tight party discipline and allow a free vote. Considering that the vast majority (74%) of current Conservative MPs are anti-choice, a majority Conservative Government could easily pass an anti-abortion bill into law.

Consider the following facts, largely culled from yesterday's press release issued by the ARCC:

Québec Native Women's Association responds to Harper's apology for residential schools

Anna Carastathis — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:34:47 +0000

Ellen Gabriel.jpg

The Québec Native Women's Association has called upon the Canadian government to acknowledge that residential schools were an act of genocide.

Statement by Quebec Native Women's Association/Femmes Autochtones du Québec

Re : Government of Canada's Residential School Apology
June 11, 2008, Kahnawake

Quebec Native Women recognizes the Prime Minister's official apology concerning the genocidal experience of Aboriginal people in the history of the Residential School system. While the apology to Aboriginal peoples is long overdue it is contradicted by the oppressive policies of the Indian
Act.

The heinous crimes committed against Aboriginal children who were victims and survivors of the Residential School experience must be dealt with beyond mere apologies and monetary compensation.

For Many Women, Alberta's Boom a Bust

dru — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:30:15 +0000

Rising housing costs, lack of alternatives lead to precarious situations

Driven by the tar sands, Alberta's white-hot economy continues to make headlines. But the gendered repercussions of the province's boom are often neglected, understated, or altogether denied.

Alberta's tar sands operations have made the province an attractive point of relocation for many in the last couple of decades. A large number of jobs have been created, many paying six-figure salaries. Other industries, most notably the service sectors, have had to compete with these salaries in a struggle to retain workers. As wages have been pushed higher in order to lure employees, rent has increased as landlords capitalize on the increases in income. Those without the resources or skills to tap into Alberta's renowned boom and profit from it are the most likely to have to deal with its negative consequences.

In the case of the tar sands, women have often been discouraged from pursuing the very resources and skills necessary to capitalize on the booming industry.

This is due in part to many female workers' experiences with sexual harassment, gender discrimination and unequal wages. Sixteen years ago, Mobil Oil's first female landman, Delorie Walsh, submitted a claim of gender discrimination, a poisoned work environment and unequal pay. She was finally compensated in October 2007.

Those benefiting most from the oil and gas workforce are male. For example, current male/female ratios are 79 to 21 per cent for geoscientists and 96 to 4 per cent for trades.

The significant gendered imbalance of access to jobs means unequal access to housing. Observers say this has led to a steady decline in quality of life for women. "The boom is great if you're a CEO in downtown Calgary," says Edmonton NDP MLA Ray Martin. "Saskatoon is now experiencing a mini-boom too. But this means that more and more people are falling behind." The "successful" economy has created an urgent lack of affordable housing, transitional housing, and shelter spaces, particularly for women.

Women tend to be more susceptible to losing their homes due to abuse or conflict with a spouse or caretaker upon whom they are financially dependent. Because women are more likely to have children to look after, and are less likely to feel safe on the street or in shelters where men are also present, many return to abusive relationships when there is no alternative shelter available.

This is one of the reasons why men make up the more visible segment of homeless populations, says author Susan Scott. Earlier this year, Scott interviewed over 60 homeless women across Canada about their lives. She is critical of the limited definition of the term "homeless."

"If a woman is sleeping with her landlord to maintain a roof over her head, then she is homeless," says Scott. "Other women will do it for money for drugs, to medicate a trauma that they've suffered which has gone untreated--they are also homeless. Others will hang out in a bar, hoping for a bed and a safe place--they are also homeless."

The Women's Emergency Accommodation Centre (WEAC) in Edmonton is the most well known of less than a handful of women's shelters in the city. It can accommodate just 75 women per night, and there are generally 25 to 30 women staying there for a longer term, which means fewer beds available for those seeking emergency shelter.

Amy Gillis, an inner-city physician in Edmonton, says there are few other options for women seeking shelter. "There's the George Spadie Centre, but you usually have to be intoxicated to go there. There's the Hope Centre, but they have far fewer spaces available for women than men. There are not enough absolute spaces for women, and there is little stability in these places."

The shelter situation in Fort McMurray is grimmer still. Currently, none of the shelters there accept minors. A report released this month by the region's Homelessness Initiatives Steering Committee found that some teenagers are resorting to prostitution in exchange for a bed or couch for the night.

Jan Reimer, Provincial Co-ordinator of the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters and a former mayor of Edmonton, says the need for spaces far outstrips supply. "Last year, we served 13,000 women and children. On top of that, 25,000 could not be accommodated and 15,000 simply could not find a place to stay. Only four shelters in Alberta have all of their beds funded by the province. The capacity really needs to be increased."

Part of the reason there are so many more women and children in need of shelter than there is shelter space is that Alberta has no transitional housing program. As a result, there is often nowhere for them to go from the shelter, except back to the street. Establishing a good transitional housing program would help women dealing with trauma, or legal issues, but more importantly, it would buy time, which is what many need most. "A lot of women can't find a place to live, due to a lack of references, or a bad history with landlords. What they need is physical support in the community," says Gillis.

Affordable, quality child care is one indication of a community's support of women. A lack of child care can result in women's inability to access social services necessary to get out of shelters. Alberta is the only Canadian province that has not added child care spaces over the last 15 years. In fact, it is the only province that has seen a decrease; between 1992 and 2004, the number of spaces dropped by 7.2 per cent.

Despite a serious lack of child care spaces, Alberta's population is growing at five times the national rate, and faster than anywhere in the Western world. The strong economy has encouraged migration to the province, which has contributed to a 10.4 per cent increase in total population since 2001, and a rental vacancy rate of 0.9 per cent--the lowest in a generation, and a third of the national average.

If current economic growth continues apace to 2025, the province could face an estimated shortfall of 332,000 workers, many of whom are expected to come from other countries, and will also need places to live. Already, housing formerly considered affordable has been purchased for "worker housing." There now exists a new group of workers that cannot afford to pay rent. In Fort McMurray, for example, it is common to pay over $1,000 for one room.

"Not enough money is being spent on infrastructure to keep up with the speed of tar sands development," says Ray Martin. "I think that there are just too many tar sands projects going on right now. There should be fewer projects."

Federal Liberal cuts to social infrastructure in the 1990s and decades of provincial Conservative inaction on social housing have together set the stage for Alberta's current housing crisis. Alberta's Affordable Housing Task Force, which toured in the spring of this year, found that Calgary's 2006 homeless count indicated a 32 per cent increase over the past two years. Edmonton showed an increase of 19 per cent, while Fort McMurray's homeless population rose by 24 per cent. Housing prices in Calgary have soared by 50 to 60 per cent in the last year alone, and by an average of 14 per cent in all of Alberta.

Alberta has yet to adopt rent-increase guidelines similar to those employed in Ontario or BC. Of all the recommendations made by Alberta's Affordable Housing Task Force, the most controversial item by far was the proposal to introduce rent control. According to Martin, who supports the recommendations, the Task Force, for the purpose of proposing effective measures, presented a package deal which would have to have been accepted in totality or not at all.

For example, a law stipulating the amount of legal increases, and a law limiting rent increases to only once a year, are complementary, whereas picking and choosing from the recommendations creates loopholes. "There is resistance to approving the whole package," says Martin.

"One of the main arguments is that accepting rent controls would provide even less incentive for the government to create much needed affordable housing. But the fact remains that there are no limits on rent and I still haven't seen more affordable housing being created."

A tenancy law passed in May that promises tenants a full year's eviction notice (when landlords plan to convert their apartments to condos) is being avoided in practice through a number of loopholes. The full year's notice only applies to periodic tenants, whose leases are renewed without notice. For everyone else, the majority of whom are fixed-term tenants, the lease ends on the date indicated, and no notice has to be given by the landlord to end the tenancy.

Dania Kochan, an Edmonton resident whose lease had expired, had made an agreement with her landlord to rent on a month-to-month basis. In June, she was given one month's eviction notice, and told by Service Alberta, the government branch that oversees and enforces tenancy laws, to "get a lawyer" when she complained.

Jim Gurnett of the Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness (ECOHH) finds the situation tiring. "Poor tenants are not a high priority," says Gurnett.

"Just as long as the government can point to a law that's there to protect them," they feel that's enough. There were 4,100 condo conversions in Calgary between January and May of this year, and the number keeps rising.

Alberta's housing crisis is massive and affects people across demographic boundaries. "Employees at Calgary women's shelters are as in need of affordable housing as the women they serve," says Reimer. "What's worse, the salaries being paid in the oil industry are so high, they can't find people to work in donut shops, let alone shelters."

The province has resorted to hiring government employees from the service sector and has successfully recruited employees from women's shelters. Women's shelter workers see this as adding insult to injury. Reimer cites occurrences of workers from women's shelters being lured from their jobs for positions at Dunkin' Donuts, a company known to offer 'signing bonuses' of $1,500 to increase their chances of acquiring staff.

"What needs to happen immediately," says Reimer, "is a government investment that will allow the [human services] sector to provide competitive wages and benefits that will attract and retain a workforce. Frontline shelter workers need to be respected by the government."

Susan Scott says that there is no substitute for a real strategy for dealing with homelessness. The responsibility, she says, lies with the government and with the people of Alberta.

"Alberta is really good at band-aid solutions," says Scott. "People will give at Christmas, and Thanksgiving, so you can see it's really not a thorough process; we give, and we turn right around and blame the victims. No housing means that people will be homeless. Shelter is a right. Society has set it up so access is limited to those who can afford it."

The Edmonton Small Press Association contributed information and contacts to this article.

Housing Demonstration

Housing Demonstration 2

Downtown Eastside Women Ask Politicians for Housing Swap

dru — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:30:33 +0000

Living conditions deteriorating from cuts, Olympic preparations, says group

Shelters, transition houses and safe houses in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) turn away about 200 people each night, leaving many on the streets without access to basic amenities.

A press conference held on July 4 by Power of Women (POW) at the DTES Women's Centre revealed a group of women who have experienced -- and continue to experience -- poverty first-hand in a myriad of unsettling circumstances. Some young, some old, and all looking a little weary, the women who assembled to share their stories and their demands were exasperated, but not lacking in focus or energy. They seemed to relish the opportunity to speak out and possibly be heard by as many people as watch the evening news. The room was charged with a feeling of legitimacy that can only come from the recounting of lived struggle. They took turns speaking and acknowledging one another. Some had a lot to say, and said it loud, while others were only there to share a few succinct words. The press conference came days after the group presented an open letter to Mayor Sam Sullivan and City Council. The letter challenges the 11-member council to swap homes with POW members for eight weeks. The demand was spurred by the upcoming 2010 Olympic Games; the number of homeless in Vancouver doubled in 2005 to approximately 2174 and is predicted to triple due to the Olympics. These figures do not account for a much larger population that pays for sub-standard housing in Vancouver’s DTES; their situations rendered increasingly more precarious by rising housing prices and urban development, the impoverished are finding that there are fewer and fewer places to go.

Canada's poorest neighbourhood, the DTES has long been dubbed a nucleus of deplorable living conditions. People are forced to live in hotel rooms and boarding houses due to an affordable housing crisis of massive proportions. Many such hotels are notorious for sudden and unexplained evictions. For women, indigenous people and people with disabilities, obstacles quickly accumulate. For those able to find work, the province has not made things much easier. B.C.'s privatization of public services has cost over 20,000 unionized workers their jobs, three-quarters of whom are women. The B.C. Human Rights Commission and Ministry of Women's Equality, both considered tools to fight discrimination, have been eliminated and pay equity provisions in B.C. have been repealed. This means that there is no longer a requirement that women receive equal pay for work of comparable value to that performed by men. Women working low-income jobs, whether or not they have dependants, often live below the poverty line and seldom have the time or energy to investigate the reasons behind the scarcity they encounter on a daily basis.

Cuts to legal aid and to income assistance, the closure of women's centres, political assaults on women's advocacy and support services, the lack of childcare support, cuts to welfare and changes to eligibility for welfare, the rising cost of living, and low-income work: these have all had devastating, gendered effects. While women have historically been marginalized in politics and public planning, they carry the burden of care-work and are therefore the most directly-affected by those policies. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cuts to Status of Women Canada (SWC) centres and his cancelled agreement with the provinces for more daycare spaces has many feeling that women's rights are being trampled upon by the government, which is systematically eliminating institutions intended to secure them. The budget allotted to SWC has been cut from $13 million to $5 million, leaving 12 of their 19 offices facing closure, and indicating an end to core funding for all 37 Women's Centres in B.C. In an effort to depoliticize SWC, the government has prohibited the agency from funding groups that undertake advocacy for women's rights. The word "equality" has also been removed from the agency's mandate.

At the press conference, many members of POW described the physical conditions of the "way of life" that they experience: hotel rooms are rarely, if ever, cleaned; faeces, condoms and clothes from previous tenants are often left strewn about; most often, rooms are infested by bugs or rodents; bathrooms are generally shared and sometimes lack a shower; people that have paid rent for years, sometimes decades, are evicted without notice or justification; and the expulsion of their belongings, and themselves, is often police-enforced. Ex-sex worker and POW member Susanna Kilroy spoke of hoping to "survive the Olympics." Another woman, Beatrice Star, said she hopes and prays "not to get evicted before 2010." POW Member and indigenous rights activist Anita Chubb-Kennedy said: "where is everybody's social conscience? These people are not animals. It's social cleansing, what they're doing." Chubb-Kennedy invited Phil Fontaine, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, to comment on the situation facing indigenous people in the DTES: "every native is supposed to have a house, but the actual situation is comparable to the third world...we [aboriginal peoples] are still the first owners of the country," she said. "It's not up to Stephen Harper to 'give' land that's not his. The treaties aren't done being worked through." 'No Olympics on stolen Native land' has become a rallying cry for indigenous resistance to the games. "One question I think deserves a bit of focus is the athletes," said Kilroy. "Do they know? That people are dying?"

A June 2007 report by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) found that 2 million people have been forcibly displaced in the last 20 years to clear space for the Olympic Games. Jean du Plessis, executive director of COHRE, said, "Our research shows that little has changed since 1988 when 720,000 people were forcibly displaced in Seoul, South Korea, in preparation for the Summer Olympic Games. It is shocking and entirely unacceptable that 1.25 million people have already been displaced in Beijing, in preparation for the 2008 Games, in flagrant violation of their right to adequate housing." The hosting of the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 as well as those in Sydney in 2000 led to immense difficulties faced by tenants, boarders and lodgers, ranging from substantial rent increases, no-fault evictions and the closure of cheap rooms. Much like Mayor Sullivan's "Project Civil City," which many contend is aimed to police and criminalize Vancouver's poor, Atlanta and Sydney both undertook measures to "clear the streets" of the poor in order to make way for an enormous influx of tourists. In 2004, the Olympics in Athens forced the eviction of the Roma community of Marousi for a parking lot and road enlargements.

A march for safe and long-term affordable housing organized by POW and held on June 8 occurred in solidarity with the Women Against Poverty Collective (WAPC) in Toronto, who on June 3 orchestrated a housing takeover to draw attention to the connection between safe housing and women's ability to live free from violence. WAPC members, along with many others, marched to an abandoned building near Sherbourne and Bloor with the intention of converting it to safe housing. Once inside, the women hung a banner and pitched tents on the property, saying that they would keep the building and provide their own affordable housing for women and their children. The group said this action is necessary because the government hasn’t followed through on promises for housing and childcare. The police ended the standoff, arresting two people in the process.

In one of Vancouver's better-known anti-Olympics rallies held in February, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), and the Vancouver Board of Trade were celebrating the disclosure of a "three-year countdown clock" in the downtown business district. Native People from all over B.C. participated in the rally, together with non-native members of the Anti-Poverty Committee, who are protesting the gentrification of their neighbourhood and the eviction of hundreds from low-income housing in the DTES. Seven protesters were arrested during the protest. Tselletkwe of the Native Youth Movement (NYM) made a statement upon her release, stating: "Our land is not for sale, we are still at war with Canada, we have never surrendered our land. We want the whole world to know not to come to our country and to boycott Canada and the 2010 Olympic Games. Tourism is not welcome here."

Unlike members of POW, or NYM, who are fighting for their homes and their land and who would rather see the Olympics shut down than have to deal with the catastrophe that it will wreak on the quality of their lives, the province has made choices that reflect a desire for worldwide Olympic tourism. In June 2004, Visa announced two global agreements with Tourism Vancouver and Tourism Whistler to promote domestic and international travel in the run-up to and during the 2010 Olympics. The multi-million-dollar global agreements will offer Visa cardholders worldwide value-added offers and incentives to visit Vancouver and Whistler and are expected to stimulate tourism spending in Western Canada. Tourism Vancouver maintains that their leadership “benefits the society, culture, environment and economy of Greater Vancouver.”

The proposed House Swap with the women of the DTES is intended to breed understanding through experience. POW member Joan Morelli pointed out that "even the well-meaning politicians don't understand. That's why we're challenging them. There is no understanding without experience." The swap is also focused on issues of respect: "if Sullivan wants a civil city, let politicians show some courtesy," said Morelli. Council members would live on the same amount as an average single person on social assistance: $610 per month. After the cost of shelter, this averages to less than $8 a day. As it is believed that it would be much easier for Council members to rent hotel rooms due to the fact that many wear their privileged lifestyles on their sleeves, and that many are, in fact, white, or male, at least two of the eight weeks must be spent homeless. Meanwhile, the women who offered the challenge would live as the Councillors do. To date, not a single member of Council has accepted the terms of the swap. A few have expressed reasons they do not wish to participate, such as bedbugs and concern for the safety of their children. Councillor Suzanne Anton said she was "interested in doing a night, but I don't think I'd be interested in spending a long time." Mayor Sullivan himself declined because, he said, he's already familiar with the issues, as he once collected welfare and spent several years in a social housing co-op and a paraplegic lodge in Vancouver's East End.

Sullivan's "Project Civil City,” proposed in November of 2006, outlines his aim to "eliminate" homelessness, the open drug market, and the incidence of aggressive panhandling, with the goal to reduce all of these by 50% by 2010. He also aims to "increase the level of public satisfaction with the City's handling of public nuisance and annoyance complaints" by 50% by 2010. These targets are aggressive and require aggressive law enforcement, which is causing the concern of many living in the DTES. “People chalk it [poverty] up to inefficiency, inactiveness,” said Chubb-Kennedy.

A research team, coordinated by COHRE, spent three years studying past and future Olympic host cities and the impact that the Games have had on housing rights. The report also addresses the housing effects of other mega-events like the FIFA World Cup, World Expos, IMF/World Bank Conferences and beauty pageants such as the Miss World and Miss Universe contests. It concludes that mega-events can cause a number of breaches in housing rights. "It is possible (and imperative) for mega-events to be organized without forcibly evicting people, without criminalizing the homeless and without rendering housing unaffordable," said Du Plessis. COHRE calls on affected communities and support organizations to closely monitor these processes, and to take action to ensure that no housing rights are violated as a result of mega-events. To the women of the DTES, however, and many others, the onus for ensuring that no housing rights are violated should fall on the government, rather than groups with little or no funding who must struggle to be represented by the media.

Refusal of the terms of the house swap and Councilors’ excuses for not participating are not acceptable to the women of the DTES. "This would be a confirmation," they said, "that there is absolutely no political will to eliminate poverty."

Anita Chubb-Kennedy

Joan Morelli

Laying the Law (Down)

dru — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:23:56 +0000

Legal context for sex work in Canada

Over the past 20 years at least 60 sex workers have ‘gone missing’ or have been murdered in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and the bodies of at least 20 murdered sex workers have been found in Edmonton. Current laws on prostitution and the manner in which they are applied put sex workers’ lives in danger by legitimizing and perpetuating abuse and violence against sex workers. Sex workers on the street are disproportionately affected by these criminal laws and specifically targeted for violence. Very recently, in Canada and elsewhere, these laws have allowed individuals, like Gary Ridgeway, dubbed “the Green River killer,” to use the ambiguity of these laws to his sordid advantage. In 2003, Ridgeway justified the murder of over 40 prostitutes and declared that he “picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

The criminalization of sex workers prevents them from accessing social protection and contributes to grave human-rights abuses of sex workers. This criminalization explains why sex workers are too often exploited, beaten, raped and killed.

Violence is a reality that sex workers around the world face everyday: violence through stigma, violence from the government, and violence from policies that put sex workers’ lives in danger. While prostitution is legal, virtually every activity surrounding it is not. The criminal code prohibits the public solicitation of business ("communicating"), the management and use of regular work sites ("bawdy-houses"), and any other managerial activity ("procuring"). This contradictory legislation makes it nearly impossible for sex workers to work safely and without intimidation from clients, police and residents. Not only has sex work been criminalized to this extent but sex workers and clients are subjected to oppressive treatment from their communities in terms of exclusion, violence and extreme repression. As reported by Stella, a Montreal-based sex-workers’ organization, “in 2002 residents of a central neighbourhood in Montreal went [after sex workers] out into the streets with baseball bats. The media tagged the event ‘a witch-hunt’. We saw the same thing in the summer of 2000 when police operations against clients began with intensity: three times more acts of violence were reported in Stella’s Bad Tricks and Attackers List."

Lobbies to amend, repeal, or reform prostitution law have had a vibrant presence since the 1970s. When sex workers began organizing for decriminalization in the 1970s, the term ‘sex worker’ rather than ‘prostitute’ was used to define their movement. This new term was created at the onset of this new social movement in an attempt to counteract claims that sex work is inherently exploitative and to emphasize that sex workers view their work as employment and themselves as workers. Sex workers’ fight for decriminalization of their work and better working conditions has since grounded much of the sex workers’ rights movement. In addition to this, sex-worker leadership and self-determination stands at the forefront of sex workers’ demands.

The sex-workers’ rights movement is not without its opponents. Among the most vocal sources of opposition are feminist abolitionists who view sex work as an inherent exploitation of the body and sex workers as victims with little agency. These feminists typically oppose decriminalization and concentrate on the eradication of sex work entirely. This perspective has posed grave difficulty for sex workers attempting to seek their rights. Many of the policy reforms that feminist abolitionists propose also criminalize sex workers and their clients, and perpetuate a cycle of abuse and exploitation. This perspective, at best, excludes sex workers, and, at worst, results in policies that impact negatively on sex workers’ lives and work. Whereas the majority of the mainstream feminist movement (including abolitionists and other liberal women’s groups) is seeking to end the exploitation they see as sex work, sex workers and other feminists are seeking to end exploitative conditions in sex work caused by dangerous working conditions and oppressive legislative contexts.

The above debate is one that has, unfortunately, stalled the progress of law reform efforts that seek safer working conditions for sex workers. Organizing around law reform has therefore posed a double challenge: Sex workers not only have to combat the negative stereotypes of sex work that feminist abolitionists perpetuate, they have also been obligated to educate parliamentary leaders on the realities of sex workers’ lives. For this reason sex workers insist on leadership around sex-work issues and on having input into the creation of laws that affect their lives.

In 2002, Canadian sex workers had a small opportunity to educate parliamentary leaders on sex workers’ realities, in the attempt to create safer working conditions. Vancouver East Riding MP Libby Davies had responded to the violence in her community by calling for the creation of a parliamentary committee (SSLR) to review current prostitution law. However, sex worker organizations found that the recommendations presented in their 2006 report did little to improve working conditions for sex workers; instead, the report encouraged common stereotypes of sex workers. Other initiatives have included a constitutional court challenge taking place in Ontario (2007) and one to take place in Vancouver in the next year.

Acknowledging that sex workers are in the best position to speak to their own realties, sex workers have, alongside these legal initiatives, created education initiatives and campaigns to highlight the human-rights abuses caused by current legislation. In Canada alone there are hundreds of sex workers organizing for their rights. Stella, a community resource group created in 1995 and run by and for sex workers, has been leading education campaigns, violence awareness, community building and empowerment strategies. Over the past 30 years numerous sex worker initiatives have been organized to create a solid front against human-rights abuses and to promote safer working conditions for sex workers worldwide.

Sex workers and their supporters insist that law reform is only part of the solution to a much bigger problem caused by stigma and discrimination against sex workers. Law reform has been the focus of morality debates around prostitution while the morality that guides prostitution laws has not yet been put into question. The current criminal code in conjunction with the discriminatory application of these laws contributes to a culture of indifference and violence towards sex workers for which all members of society need to be accountable. Sex workers need to be acknowledged as experts in law-reform debates, and their perspectives be privileged. Until sex workers are acknowledged as experts about their own experience and considered by the broader culture as full members of society, communities of sex workers will thrive and continue to create empowering tools by which they can put an end to the human-rights abuses they face.

Jenn Clamen is a sex-work activist based in Montreal, Canada. Next month in the Dominion Jenn will explore labour issues for sex workers and sex workers' organizing within labour movements

Resources for sex-worker groups and further reading:

Canada:
www.chezstella.org
www.lacoalitionmontreal.com
www.maggiestoronto.ca
www.eroticguild.com

International:
www.nswp.org
www.bayswan.org
www.durbar.org
www.empowerfoundation.org
www.ziteng.org.hk
www.iusw.org
www.apnsw.org

Sex Workers Demonstrate

International Womens' Day assault

dru — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:06:37 +0000

Police assaulted several marchers at an International Womens' Day demonstration last week. This thursday, a demonstration opposed to police brutality is being organized in Montreal as well.

Doctors Without Borders' Work with Women in Haiti

darren ell — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:47:26 +0000

A representative of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti has asked me to remind people to the work they are doing with women in Haiti as a way of marking International Women's Day. If you go to their site, you'll find the following the informationl below.

English Site: http://www.msf.ca/en/news/newsreleases/2007/021907_haiti.html

French Site:
http://www.msf.ca/fr/news/newsreleases/2007/021907_haiti.html

- a brief introductory article to the Jude Anne hospital project
- web video interview with our Head of Mission on obstetric needs of women in Port au Prince
- photo slide show with captions

Keeping The Faith

hillarybain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:45:31 +0000

Guatemalan feminists fight for change

One year ago, on March 8, 2006, as in many cities worldwide, thousands of women took to the streets in Guatemala City for the advancement of women’s rights. The hand-woven blouses and traditional wrap-around skirts worn by the majority of Mayan women created a sea of colour in the downtown core. Amidst this sea, a group of some 50 women marched under the banner of the Red Ecumenica de Mujeres (REM), the Women’s Ecumenical Network, a religious group of women’s rights activists and a working group of the larger Conference of Evangelical Churches in Guatemala (CIEDEG).

The national co-ordinator of the REM, Miriam Iquique, had organized school bus transportation for women of her village to allow them to participate, some for the first time, in the march for women’s rights in Guatemala City. Iquique says this kind of exposure to women’s rights work is important “because so many rurally-based women do not have the economic resources to travel to the capital.”

If asked to imagine ‘radical feminists,’ most Canadians would not think of a Christian organization, but the REM is working hard to advance women’s participation in the political landscape. This work is in the face of an increasingly violent atmosphere, where women are frequently brutalized or found murdered on Guatemala’s streets and where women’s education is often sacrificed in times of economic hardship.

Iquique and her colleagues agree that in their communities, “women are struggling for equality in the workplace.” The REM “is committed to bringing information to women so that they may understand their rights and heal the scars left by the war.” Empowering women with human rights education, addressing topics such as leadership, domestic violence, reproductive health and contraception laws, small business management, as well as enhancing literacy skills are part of what the REM calls the “therapeutic process,” a process they seek to hasten in post- civil war Guatemala. They are working with women from many different ethnic groups in Guatemala: the K’qchi, the Mam, the Kaqchikel, Tzutujil, as well as Ladina women and women of communities displaced by the war. Iquique’s home-base is the office of the Kaqchikel Presbytery, a decision-making body of representatives of local congregations, in the department of Chimaltenango, a region which suffered greatly during the violence of the 1980s, in which at least 200,000 Guatemalans, mostly indigenous people, were killed or disappeared.

The women of the REM cite their faith in God as that which sustains them in their struggle for a dignified life and at times, the REM face critiques from other women’s rights groups who do not share their religious focus. For example, during the Women’s Day March meetings at La Sector de Mujeres (a woman’s rights group that spoke out against a series of malicious break-ins to their capital office this past June), the REM’s proposal to open the march with a prayer was not widely welcomed. However, these different women’s rights groups appear united by a vision of a ‘dignified’ life, one filled with opportunities for all.

Even if their religious foundation may deter some, the REM is a unique example of inter-denominational communication; something that is greatly lacking in Guatemala. With Catholic and Evangelical women at the table, Iquique and her colleagues meet to discuss how they can secure funding to carry out their ambitious plans of leadership training for the women of rural Guatemala without concern for the differences in their faith practices.

This year, like last year, their project is gravely under-funded; so much so that Miriam worries the Women’s Day March may not be as well attended by women from her community. Despite the obvious disappointment in her voice, she is forever optimistic and reports that she is currently holding educational sessions for the women in her community about the upcoming Guatemalan elections, because “it is ever more important that women understand politics and know how and why to vote.”

The group currently receives a limited amount of funding from the Anglican Church of Canada, but it is not enough to cover the costs in all the geographic regions where they wish to work. And so, as another International Women’s Day approaches, it is unfortunate that Canadian and Guatemalan women’s rights activists can find common ground; just as recent cuts to funding restrict women’s organizations in Canada, the call for economic justice rings clear from feminist organizers in Guatemala.

REM #2

REM #1