Category: Human Rights

The Canadian Labour Congress has an exciting opportunity to recognize the work of members working for fairness. The organization is currently seeking nominations for its annual Carol McGregor Disability Rights Award.

This award aims to recognize individuals who have made an impact in promoting the rights of persons with disabilities. Carol McGregor, the woman whose name represents the award, was a long time member of the National Union of Public and General Employees and fierce advocate for persons with disabilities. You can read more about her outstanding work and the award here.

If you know someone in our union who demonstrates the same commitment to fairness and equality, please consider nominating them for the Carol McGregor Disability Rights Award. You can nominate a member online by clicking this link.

Last Sunday wrapped up the Human Rights Conference in Winnipeg. For Genevieve Babineau of Alberta, for whom this was her first UNE event, the conference blew away her expectations.

“I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more,” said Babineau. “I met a lot of good people. It was a great networking opportunity.”

Babineau said she also learned a lot more about the union during this conference.

“The union’s role isn’t just to sit there and hear complaints – there’s activity going on all the time to make things better.”

Related: Were you at the Human Rights Conference? Please fill out our survey.

For the B.C.-Yukon region, the conference was a chance to raise money for a good cause. They used Nadine Kirychuk’s award-winning painting to create buttons. These were sold to raise funds for Sisters in Spirit; a branch of the Native Women’s Association of Canada that aims to put a stop to the growing number of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

“We started selling them for $3 each,” said Regional Human Rights Representative Steve Houston (B.C.-Yukon). “And then we thought, ‘if we just sold them by donation, then people could give $20 a button.’”

“And some people did, actually.”

Houston mentioned that at one point, signed copies of the buttons were going for $10 each.

“I think people had fun with it,” he added.

And speaking of fun, the hospitality suite became another place to raise money for this important cause. Assistant Vice-President for Human Rights Daniel Toutant said he never expected to find a grand piano in the hospitality suite.

While Toutant was cranking out some tunes on the piano on the first night, a member placed a tip jar on the piano.

“I said ‘no, this money won’t be for me. Everything we raise, we’ll donate to Sisters in Spirit,’” recounted Toutant.

On Saturday morning, Toutant woke up with a better idea: he was going to start charging $2 per song.

“At one point, I had a choir of 20 people around me,” he said.

“It was an incredible success. People were singing – just thinking about it, I still get goosebumps.”

While pianists typically take 20-minute breaks to rest their fast-moving fingers, Toutant played from 8:15 p.m. to midnight on Saturday night. But even if he woke up the next day with his fingers still numb, he would do it all over again.

“In my entire career as a pianist, it was the best experience of my life.”

In fact, if there’s a piano in Victoria, Toutant says he’ll do the same thing to raise money for a local battered women’s shelter.

Related: There are pictures of Piano Dan in action on Flickr.

In the end, conference participants raised more than $4,000 to end violence against our aboriginal sisters.

Fundraising aside, the conference was a great place for participants to expand their knowledge of human rights.

“I was very happy with the weekend. I found that everybody participated.” said National Vice-President for Human Rights, Karoline Klüg. “It was most amazing.”

After one of the workshops Klüg facilitated, she was surprised to see discussions continuing well into the break. And even if the sessions ran late a few times, participants didn’t bail; they were still engaged – totally enthusiastic.

“I found the engagement of our participants totally inspiring.”

For conference first-timer Genevieve Babineau, the experience solidified her desire to get involved with the union. She was elected as a convention delegate and as the first alternate human rights representative for Aboriginal Peoples.

“I think the people who were there weren’t there because they thought it was cool, but because everybody at one point or another experienced something unpleasant in the workplace,” said Babineau.

“Everybody I talked to had an amazing story of courage. I thought: wow, I’m not the only one.’”

Want more news from the conference? Check out our conference newsletter.

The period from June 21 to July 1 is commonly referred to as the Eleven Days of Celebration; they encompass National Aboriginal Day, St-Jean Baptiste Day, Canadian Multiculturalism Day and Canada Day. It’s an opportunity to celebrate all aspects of our heritage – to reflect on the wide range of people who contributed to building our great country.

But perhaps this is also a good time to talk about the importance of heritage — the importance of preserving it for future generations.

Institutions responsible for collecting and preserving our heritage have suffered drastic cuts. These include Library and Archives Canada, our national museums, Heritage Canada, Parks Canada and the National Capital Commission.

At Library and Archives Canada, like many other departments and agencies that we represent, the staff was cut by 20%.

“The people who’ve lost their jobs are the ones who assist visitors, teachers, researchers and students,” said National President Doug Marshall. “Canadians are being deprived of valuable services and it’s future generations that are going to be robbed of their heritage.”

When it comes to acquiring important pieces of our history, the department hasn’t been making acquisitions since a 10-month moratorium on purchases was put in place in 2009. Ten months, four years… same thing?

Meanwhile, the head of Library and Archives Canada just recently stepped down after it was revealed that he spent $170,000 in travel and hospitality expenses; twice that of the minister. And the expenses included $5,000 for Spanish lessons…. ¡Ayayay!

Another very sad cut was the loss of the National Archival Development Program; a small program that cost only $1.7 million per year. That very teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny, tiny little amount of money (in the great scheme of things!) helped support over 800 archives during the past 26 years.

Interesting math: the money spent on the war of 1812 could have kept the National Archival Development Program alive for 16 years.

The program provided education and advisory services for archives and archivists who would not otherwise be able to afford these services that helped them preserve the unique and irreplaceable documents, photos, plans and electronic records in their care.

It’s important to remember that many smaller archives are run by volunteers – so this service was incredibly important.

And while we’re on the topic of cuts that don’t really make sense; consider Library and Archives Canada has been touting digitization as the magic pill to make our history more accessible… but then it turned around and cut the staff responsible for digitizing archives was cut by 50%.

According to the Canadian Association of University Teachers, as of September 2012, only 0.5% of LAC’s holdings had been digitized. The association estimates that, “at the current rate of spending on digitization (approx $5 million annually) it would take LAC 300-700 years to digitize its published holdings.”

And, just to throw some more irony in the mix, the government that wants to make history more accessible just eliminated the inter-library loan service; a service that allowed Canadians to borrow material only available from the LAC via their local library. According to the CAUT:

In the fiscal year 2012-2013 alone, LAC filled 21,294 requests for loans and copies from its collections and helped locate materials at other facilities in response to another 11,658 requests. The loss of [the inter-library loan service] is a huge blow to Canadians’ ability to access our collective history.

Oh, but that’s okay! Because, err… Canadians have access to soooo much of LAC’s material online.

Seriously.

A government bent on assimilation; that’s what our nation’s Aboriginal Peoples had to fight for more than a century. To talk about Aboriginal Peoples’ history, in a human rights context, means recognizing that for many years, the Canadian government’s goal was to make Aboriginal People incapable of directing their destiny – unable to resist assimilation.

Shortly after Confederation, the government began to force Aboriginal People into ‘becoming civilized’. The Constitution Act gave the federal government responsibility over ‘Indians’. The government then gave itself the business of determining who was and who wasn’t ‘Indian’.

Who was and wasn’t a ‘status Indian’ became a complicated thing. Indian status was passed down from fathers; if only your father was Indian, so were you. If only your mother was, then you weren’t. A status Indian woman who married a non-status man was suddenly not considered status Indian anymore. That policy stayed in effect until 1985.¹

Many status Indians automatically also lost their status as a result of graduating college or university.

Band councils were established, but mainly to displace the dominance of elders. By undermining the elders, the Indian Act was designed to weaken Indian communities and make them easier to control.

“Despite this show of respect, the Indian Act allowed band councils limited authority. Indian agents could remove from office chiefs whom they considered unsuitable and overrule band council decisions with which they disagreed.”²

The government also attacked Aboriginal Peoples’ spirituality and cultural practices. Powwows and potlatches were banned until 1951. Government officials and missionaries felt that these practices “were preventing Aboriginal people from assimilating into Canadian society.”³

The government also restricted Aboriginal Peoples’ mobility.

“A pass system was introduced after the 1885 rebellion, confining Indians to reserves unless they procured a ‘pass’ from the Indian agent stating their place of travel, reason, and duration of visit. This pass system was completely extralegal and recognized as such by all Crown officials.”⁴

The pass system was nonetheless enforced by the North-Western Mounted Police, thus preventing traditional gatherings and further confining First Nations People to reserves. It made it impossible or aboriginal communities to work together to form a resistance.

Residential schools were another key mechanism by which the government hoped to assimilate Aboriginal Peoples. Children were separated from their families so they could be ‘changed’ away from their parents’ influence. These schools punished students severely for speaking their own language.

But the government didn’t have the resources to administer these schools, so they arranged for churches to do the work.

“The brutal treatment in the schools is said to have resulted in the deaths of some 50,000 native children, with countless others becoming victims of serious physical and sexual abuse.”⁵

In 1904, Dr. Peter Bryce was appointed Medical Inspector to the Department of the Interior and of Indian Affairs. Three years later, Bryce conducted inspections of 35 residential schools in the three Prairie Provinces. His report, Bryce revealed a surprising rate of sickness and death among the children. Among his recommendations, Bryce urged the government to “undertake the complete maintenance and control of the schools, since it had promised by treaty to ensure such.”

But the report was swept under the rug. Frustrated by the government’s inaction, Bryce resigned and, in 1922, published his findings in a book entitled The story of a national crime.

“This story should have been written years ago and then given to the public,” wrote Bryce in the book’s epilogue.⁶

“Today I am free to speak,” he added, after explaining that, after resigning from his position, he was no longer bound by the civil service’s oath of office, which had been the only thing keeping him silent for so long.⁷

[1] Henderson, William B. The Indian Act. Canadian Encyclopedia

[2] Berry, Susan & Brink, Jack. (2004) Aboriginal Cultures in Alberta: Five-hundred Generations. Edmonton, Alberta: McCallum Printing Group, Inc.

[3] Idem

[4] Harring, S. (2005) There Seemed to Be No Recognized Law: Canadian Law and the Prairie First Nations. In Knafla, Louis A. and  Swainger, Jonathan (Eds.), Laws and Societies in the Canadian Prairie West, 1670-1940. Vancouver, B.C.: UBC Press.

[5] Akhavan, Payam (2012) Reducing Genocide to Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[6] Bryce, P.H. (1922) The story of a national crime, as retrieved from http://www.archive.org/stream/storyofnationalc00brycuoft/storyofnationalc00brycuoft_djvu.txt

[7] Idem

May 17 is the International Day Against Homophobia.

According to the most recent report of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Intersex Association, there are still 78 countries where homosexual acts are illegal. In Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia Yemen, as well as parts of Nigeria and Somalia, being gay is punishable by death.

But the report does remark on some good news; 2012 and 2013 have been great years for those who side with marriage equality. There are now 14 countries where same-sex partners can legally marry. The latest countries to legalize marriage between partners of the same sex include Argentina, Uruguay, France and New Zealand. The United Kingdom is expected to pass its same-sex marriage bill very soon (which would finally end the second-class ‘civil partnership’ nonsense).

Even south of the border, things are changing fast. Just yesterday, Minnesota became the 12^th state to approve marriages between partners of the same sex.

But there’s still a long road ahead. This year, Fondation Émergence, a Montreal-based LGBT foundation, is trying to raise awareness about homophobia on social media.

If you want a disturbing look at just how common casual homophobia is on Twitter, you can head over to nohomophobes.com; a website designed by the University of Alberta’s Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services.

The website tracks the use of homophobic language on Twitter. Last week alone, the website tracked 361,405 instances of the word “faggot”, 80,131 instances of “so gay”, and 31,478 instances of “dyke”.

And although the site doesn’t track French homophobic language, our very unscientific research shows roughly one occurrence of the word “tapette” (the French equivalent to “faggot”) per minute.

“What we’re trying to do is focus attention like a laser beam and quantifies how common this experience is in our society,” said Dr. Kristopher Wells, a researcher at the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, in a video explaining the project.

Wells says the point is to ask people to break the silence – help them stop spreading the language of prejudice.

Have you ever encountered casual homophobic language in the workplace or among friends? What did you do? Share your story in the comments below!