Stephen Harper’s hit list

by Dennis Gruending

Sourced from

Straight Goods on-line news March 29, 2011

Here is an unofficial list of government and non-profit organizations whose funding the Conservative government has cut or ended, including government agencies that supported civil society groups. The list was compiled primarily by Judith Szabo and by Pearl Eliadis for ‘Voices’, a coalition of organizations and individuals which describes itself as “united in defence of democracy, free speech and transparency in Canada. It also includes those twelve individuals the government has fired, forced out, publicly maligned – or resigned in protest – being high-profile critics in vital public interest positions.

The list of organizations that have been shut down and cut back, and the individuals bullied, is a long one. We can expect it to grow if, as seems likely, Harper is re-elected.

1. Canada Firearms Program (Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak, Director General)

2. Canadian Wheat Board (Adran Measner, President and CEO)

3. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (Linda Keen, chair)

4. Foreign Affairs (Richard Colvin, diplomat)

5. Military Police Complaints Commission (head, Peter Tinsley)

6. Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces (Yves Coté)

7. Parliamentary Budget Officer (Kevin Page) (funding cut)

8. RCMP Police Complaints Commission (Paul Kennedy, chair)

9. Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development – Rémy Beauregard, President)*

10. Statistics Canada (Munir Sheikh, Deputy Minister)

11. Veterans Ombudsman (Col. Pat Stogran)

12. Victims of Crime, Ombudsman (Steve Sullivan)

Community organizations, NGOs and research bodies reported to have been cut or defunded  (1)

1. Action travail des femmes

2. Afghan Association of Ontario, Canada Toronto

3. Alberta Network of Immigrant Women

4. Alternatives (Quebec)

5. Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale (AFEAS)

6. Bloor Information and Life Skills Centre  (2)

7. Brampton Neighbourhood Services (Ontario)  (3)

8. Canadian Arab Federation

9. Canadian Child Care Federation

10. Canadian Council for International Cooperation

11. Canadian Council on Learning

12. Canadian Council on Social Development

13. Canadian Heritage Centre for Research and Information on Canada

14. Canadian International Development Agency, Office of Democratic Governance  (4)

15. Canadian Labour Business Centre

16. Canada Policy Research Networks

17. Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women

18. Canada School of Public Service

19. Canadian Teachers’ Federation International program

20. Canadian Volunteerism Initiative

21. Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition feminine

22. Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA)
23. Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples (Toronto)

24. Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada

25. Childcare Resource and Research Unit, Specialink

26. Climate Action Network

27. Community Access Program, internet access for communities at libraries, post offices, community centres

28. Community Action Resource Centre (CARC)

29. Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail (CIAFT)

30. Court Challenges Program (except language rights cases and legacy cases)

31. Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre Toronto: (Funding cut by CIC in Dec/2010).

32. Democracy Council  (5)

33. Department of Foreign Affairs, Democracy Unit  (6)

34. Elspeth Heyworth Centre for Women Toronto: (Funding cut by CIC in Dec/2010).

35. Environment: Youth International Internship Program

36. Eritrean Canadian Community Centre of Toronto (Funding cut by CIC in Dec/2010)

37. Feminists for Just and Equitable Public Policy (FemJEPP) in Nova Scotia

38. First Nations Child and Family Caring Society

39. First Nations and Inuit Tobacco Control Program

40. Forum of Federations

41. Global Environmental Monitoring System

42. HRD Adult Learning and Literacy programs

43. HRD Youth Employment Programs

44. Hamilton’s Settlement and Integration Services Organization (Ontario)  (7)

45. Immigrant settlement programs
46. Inter-Cultural Neighbourhood Social Services (Peel)  (8)

47. International Planned Parenthood Federation

48. Kairos  (9)

49. Law Reform Commission of Canada

50. Mada Al-Carmel Arab Centre

51. Marie Stopes International, a maternal health agency – has received only a promise of “conditional” funding if it avoids any and all connection with abortion.

52. MATCH International

53. National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL)

54. Native Women’s Association of Canada

55. New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity

56. Northwood Neighbourhood Services (Toronto: (Funding cut by CIC in December 2010).

57. Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH)

58. Ontario Association of Transitional Housing (OAITH)

59. Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care

60. Pride Toronto

61. Réseau des Tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec

62. Riverdale Women’s Centre in Toronto

63. Sierra Club of BC

64. Sisters in Spirit

65. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

66. South Asian Women’s Centre  (10)

67. Status of Women (mandate also changed to exclude “gender equality and political justice” and to ban all advocacy, policy research and lobbying)
68. Tropicana Community Services

69. Womanspace Resource Centre (Lethbridge, Alberta)

70. Women’s Innovative Justice Initiative – Nova Scotia

71. Workplace Equity/Employment Equity Program

72. York-Weston Community Services Centre Toronto

Notes –

1 “Defunding” is the term used by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. In many instances, it is about turning down grant applications rather than cutting off funding midstream, but for organizations who rely on renewed program funding to support their work, and have done so for many years, it amounts to the same thing.

2 Citizenship and Immigration Canada cut or significantly reduced their principal funding – approximately $471,000. Source: The Globe and Mail.

3 Cut in the last few years by federal government because of alleged mismanagement: Source canadianimmigrant.ca

4 The Office of Democratic Governance, which channeled much of Canada’s democracy funding, has been disbanded by CIDA.

5 A forum for discussion and collaboration among Canadian democracy promotion agencies. It has reportedly disappeared despite stated earlier commitments and interest from both government and NGOs to see it continue and even expand.

6 Folded into the Francophonie and Commonwealth division.

7 Cut in the last few years by federal government because of alleged mismanagement: Source canadianimmigrant.ca

8 Cut in the last few years by federal government because of alleged mismanagement: Source canadianimmigrant.ca

9 Including Anglican Church of Canada, Christian Reformed Church in North America, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Mennonite Central Committee, Presbyterian Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Canadian Religious Conference, and the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund.

10 The Centre has lost $571,000 – all of its federal funding – which represents nearly 70 percent of its overall budget. Source: The Globe and Mail.

Dennis Gruending is an Ottawa-based author and former Member of Parliament. He is also a former director of information for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. His books include the biography, Emmett Hall: Establishment Radical and his latest book is Truth to Power: The Journalism of a Benedictine Monk, recently released by Kingsley Publishing Services of Calgary. Nidhi Tandon www.networkedintelligence.com

Plenty of fear-mongering on refugee issue

by Paul Willcocks

Sourced from

the Trail Daily Times Local News – April 28, 2011 3:00 PM

Are they scoundrels or less than competent? That seems the choice when it comes to the Harper Conservatives’ proposed legislation on human smuggling.

And the law is just a symptom of our bizarre approach to broader immigration issues.

Bill C-49, introduced after a boatload of Tamils arrived off Vancouver Island, is grandly called the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act. (Which sounds like a Maoist slogan.)

All the opposition parties rejected the legislation, which died with the last government. Stephen Harper has pledged to pass it if he gets a majority.

It’s a bad law. False refugee claimants are already deported. And human trafficking is already a serious Criminal Code offence.

What this bill does – besides political posturing – is to introduce penalties for legitimate refugees who arrive in a group.

Unlike other refugees, they would be barred from applying for permanent residence or reuniting with their family for five years even if their claims are accepted. They could also be detained for a year without any right to challenge their detention in court.

So a refugee, fearing death or persecution in his homeland, who cobbles together money for false documents and a plane ticket and makes it into Canada is treated one way.

His neighbour, with less money, who chooses a dangerous three-month journey on a ship is treated much more harshly.

It makes no sense. Either people are legitimate refugees or they aren’t.

The law was rejected by a majority of MPs. It’s unlikely to survive a constitutional challenge. And it won’t accomplish anything.

The Conservatives either haven’t thought this through or are attempting to use a bad law to win votes.

The sleazy election flyer I got from attacking Michael Ignatieff for being “weak on border security, dangerously soft on crime” suggests a cynical political ploy at the expense of refugees.

That would continue a pattern.

When the Sun Sea arrived in Canadian waters last summer with 492 Tamil passengers, the Harper government did much fear-mongering about terrorists on the ship.

So far, two people have been found to have ties to the Tamil Tigers, a group that used terror tactics against the Sri Lankan government. They have been deported. Another 30 are still being investigated.

The other 460 were deemed no threat and their refugee applications are being assessed.

Still, the Conservatives are warning about the dire threat posed by migrants and citing the danger posed by the Tamil Tigers.

But, at the same time, the party has nominated Tamil Ragavan Paranchothy as a candidate in a Toronto suburb. (Toronto has a community of some 200,000 Tamils.) Last November, Paranchothy hosted a TV special marking an annual commemoration of dead Tamil Tiger fighters. He described them as “strong and faithful people who stood guard for the Tamils, fought for freedom and peace.”

And The Globe and Mail reported this week on consultants working in China who make illegal immigration to Canada possible for anyone with money. A federal program welcomes immigrants with $1.6 million in assets, skills and a clean record. The consultants fake the skills and records. The immigrants get a clean way Canada.

The government has yet to talk about bills to curb those abuses.

And, as the Conservative government frets about a few hundred men, women and children risking their lives for better futures, it brings in more and more people on temporary work permits to provide cheap labour.

Canada had 281,000 immigrants last year. But there were 283,000 people here on temporary permits, at the request of employers. The number has increased 76 per cent increase since 2006.

Our government will accept temporary foreign workers to clean our hotel rooms, but won’t welcome refugees looking for a safe future.

That seems a bizarre attitude for an underpopulated, demographically challenged nation of immigrants.

Just as it seems bizarre to introduce bad laws to score political points.

Footnote: Immigration is a touchy election issue for the Conservatives. All parties attempt to woo “ethnic” voters, who tend to favour measures that increases immigration, particularly family reunification programs. The Harper party also stress their social conservativism, which aligns with the traditional values of many of the communities.

But at the same time, the Conservative rhetoric on refugees attempts to appeal to other voters nervous about new Canadians.

Election Critique: The Ethnic Vote

by Dwayne Morgan

The census confirms that I exist, Yet I am the invisible Canadian, Whose experiences and concerns are ignored.

Except for when an election is called.

Suddenly, everyone cares about the plight of those who identify as non white; They call me the ethnic vote.

Our votes are like numbers in Bingo, The more of them you have, the better your chances at winning.

So we hold candidates hostage with our ballots. Watching as the roles reverse. And we are now the ones in power.

There can be no majority, without us minorities, so we wait to see who will have the courage to put their promises in writing, because talk is cheap, and our experiences are too rich to be given away with nothing in return.

So photo ops with souvlaki and butter chicken won’t be enough this time around.

Mrs. Singh, and Mr. Chow are now demanding more, and this is the new face of Canada — a new reality that must be addressed if we are to move forward.

Multiculturalism has to be more than rhetoric because we are more than just a strategy to get you into office. More than a statistic. More than just a demographic to be conquered like many of our homelands.

Who will show us that they care and truly understand?

We are a land suffering from a shortage of medical staff, yet we have policies that keep doctors driving taxicabs.

Who will speak for the faces being displaced to gentrification?

We are a nation that still fears what lies behind the veil as we tighten our borders to keep the undesirables out.

We still don’t recognize that when the funding of our youth is cut, the growth of our most needy and brilliant is also cut.

When having young people play on monkey bars is less important than having them play behind bars. There needs to be a shift in our thinking.

We are still a country that has native women disappearing faster than their land, rights, and autonomy. What promises can you make to me that you can actually keep?

Up until now, you’ve been see through like windows, and we’ve seen enough.

We are sick of promises and are demanding actions.

Who will speak to us in our language with empathy and compassion, knowing that our experience of being Canadian is just as diverse as our cultures.

We are the new face of this country, and without us, the future lacks hope.

So we’ll be saving our decisions until Election Day,

Sincerely, The Ethnic Vote.

Dwayne Morgan is a Toronto based poet, speaker, and social critic.

There has been much talk from the Conservative Party throughout this campaign about reckless this and ramshackle that as Mr. Harper effectively worked to miss-characterize the democratic process as “bickering” and “squabbling”, his disturbing uni-dimensional understanding of what community is and means in his exclusive focus on economics, and his efforts to miss-educate the Canadian political mind in his ever more aggressive pursuit of a majority government.

Whether it is his gross misrepresentations with respect to Parliamentary procedure and the nature of what constitutes “confidence” or their convenient about-face with regard to the practice and legitimacy of coalition arrangements – apparently due to the fact that Mr. Harper was no longer the beneficiary of such a possible arrangement in the House of Commons – one can’t help but become ever more suspicious as to their real underlying motivations.

But this sort of agenda driven deceit, fueled by Mr. Harper’s ever more irrational if not blind ambition – witness his BC candidate Wai Young’s courting an endorsement from acquitted accused Air India bomber Ripudaman Singh Malik in her effort to get elected –

has certainly taken a particular toll on those Canadians at the margins of our society – as one of the main if not the key “targets” of their various attacks has been the entire equity, fairness and human rights value system and architecture of our society.

It is frightening to witness how the compulsive obsessions for full control and dictatorial authority of an individual such as Stephen Harper can lead to such contempt for all and whomever that lye between him and his objectives. Such lengths as the breaking of his own “fixed elections” law ( in fact giving us the fourth election in seven years that he then has repeatedly decried ), the proroguing of Parliament ( twice ), the undermining or forced removal of twelve – I repeat twelve – employees or overseers of the work of government ( the Victims of Crime Ombudsman, the Veteran’s Ombudsman, Canada’s Chief Statistician, the President of Rights & Democracy, a former Afghanistan based Canadian diplomat, the RCMP Police Complaints Commissioner, etc ) as their respective reports or findings challenged his governments rationales or agendas.

Such an all out attack on the Parliamentary tools of transparency and accountability – by someone that was their rhetorical champion – should call for the very real concern of all Canadians regardless of political stripe – but particularly for anyone that was considering voting for such an individual.

This accountability avoidance is further underscored by the incredibly destructive move to end the mandatory long form census – as one of the chief consequences will be the loss of any meaningful data for assessing and evaluating his government’s record during their five years in office – which conveniently happens to coincide almost exactly with the time frame to be covered by the 2011 census.

But beyond the lies and the deliberate and mischievous deceptions – this same time period will have coincided with a period in Canada’s history where we’ve seen the inequality between and among Canadians grow exponentially. But even more troubling is the nature of this growing income and wealth inequality – for as it has similarly impacted other historically disadvantaged groups and communities across the country – it has fast become more “colour-coded” or racialized as the inequities and disparities as experienced by First Peoples and peoples of colour have become ever more deep and profound.

So while we watch the cynical “very ethnic votes” agenda play out ( see a sample article – “New Canadians question chase for ‘ethnic vote’” by Liz Monteiro of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record – http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/523295–new-canadians-question-chase-for-ethnic-vote – the video produced by Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change – http://www.youtube.com/colourofpoverty – and the spoken word piece – “The Ethnic Vote” by Dwayne Morgan attached ) we see very different rates of child and youth poverty becoming ever more real – in the greater Toronto area – one child in ten in low income among European groups, one child in five for East Asian groups, one child in four for Aboriginal, South Asian, Caribbean, South & Central American groups, one child in three for children of Arab and West Asian groups, and one child in two for children of African groups. In Ottawa visible minority residents are four times more likely to live with low incomes than non visible minority citizens (29.1% compared to 7.8%) and are twice as likely to be unemployed as the non visible minority residents (10.8% against 4.8%). And in Hamilton while 18.1% of all residents are living in poverty – the rate is 44 per cent for Aboriginals and 37 per cent for visible minorities. See other similarly troubling statistics from elsewhere across the country attached.

So as we see this government through its policy agenda effectively construct and oversee this growing colour-coded inequality we can’t help but become ever more angry as they spend over a billion dollars for a three day G8-G20 photo-op as well as another $26 million Canadian tax dollars to “market” their various program investments on a very partisan pre-election basis – and then make serial grand symbolic gestures with regard to historical or past wrongs – with apologies for the horrors of the Residential Schools for Aboriginal children and the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Acts – evidently meant to curry favour for electoral gain. As these communities and others experience ever deeper & higher rates of poverty and exclusion in today’s Canada, the Conservative government courts the “community leaders” ( often self-appointed to the role ) seducing them with photo-ops, all too modest redress and “access” ( such as Mani Fallon – a Conservative candidate in Newton–North Delta, BC – discussing on national television the fact that if she were to get elected the government will then bring investments into that riding – and the story about a Brampton, Ontario Conservative candidate Parm Gill and his apparent special access to Minister Jason Kenney – in Jason Kenney’s current role as the Minister of Immigration – http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/wendymesley/2011/04/the_battle_in_brampton-springdale.html )

Then you add this tragic comedy to the parallel ideologically informed attacks on other equity seeking groups – such as the ending of funding to the Sisters in Spirit program of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, the withdrawal of all federal funding from the Canadian Arab Federation and the long-established inter-church group KAIROS, the closing down of the equality rights section of the critically important Court Challenges Programme, the gutting of the federal Status of Women mandate as well as their organizational capacity, and the Conservatives regularly using immigration issues to stir up anti-immigrant sentiments among Canadians – by working to introduce two year conditional visas for sponsored spouses, by being responsible for the rapid growth of the temporary foreign worker program, by their considerable cutbacks to the extended family friendly family reunification program, by characterizing refugees as queue jumping disease ridden criminals and terrorists, and the $ 53 million cut to newcomer settlement program funding.

With all of the above one cannot help but be reminded of the famous statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) when he was referring to the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group –

“First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and the press, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist or a journalist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Many have been fooled by the very slick Conservative effort to take advantage and coast on the reputations of those that have gone before – as in when after all the hard slogging and foundation laying of recession fighting was done by Bob Rae and the Ontario NDP when the Conservative Harris-Eves government arrived ( in a bit of disturbing déjà vu think John Baird, Tony Clement, Jim Flaherty ) or in the example of present Conservative government as it followed the Chretien-Martin Liberal governments – having inherited a government in a surplus budget but then continually attempting to take credit for that success or condition.

This false construction of their administrative competency and as being sound fiscal managers – with the complicity of a largely uncritical media – has been perpetrated in tandem with their being singularly responsible for taking us ever deeper into deficit – a process well under way long before the economic downturn of the “great recession” – not to mention the fact that the Conservatives initially had refused to engage in any stimulus spending whatsoever and were only forced to do so by the active public pressure and the efforts of the opposition parties.

To avoid the risk of effectively voting against ones own self interest – let all Canadians of good will reject such mean-spiritedness and such socially destructive manipulation – with the Conservatives actively, consciously and aggressively sewing seeds of fear, hate and envy across a broad spectrum of difference and diversity – against women, Muslims, lesbians-gays-bisexuals-trans, immigrants and refugees, Arab Canadians, through a “getting tough on crime” agenda, and so on.

So which Canada are you voting for ?

See -http://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/summary_of_2011_election_platforms_final_updated2.pdf

And – http://compellingcomics.justsomeguy.com/CanadaVotes2011/Canada.html

Hi everybody.  By the time you are reading this, the Rewind The Cuts countdown clock will be well on the way to zero hour 00:00:00. Some of the agencies have asked us to extend their thanks and appreciation for all your efforts on behalf of newcomers in Toronto, in Ontario, across Canada:

“ What an amazing journey this has been.  You may ask “why, when the funding is still gone?”.   Well, since December the House passed a motion to reverse the settlement funding cuts, a huge moral victory even though the government did not (yet) honour the will of Parliament.  We are on the way to an election, this same government the first in history to be found in contempt of Parliament, not once, but twice, which speaks to the character of those we were up against.

Did we ever imagine that the City of Toronto would decide that its newcomer citizens are not worth fighting for, siding with this same government?   Nothwithstanding that shameful act, we have much to appreciate -  that the Province of Ontario stood with such strength beside its partner settlement agencies;  that so many Liberal, NDP and Bloc politicians were willing to stand up and fight relentlessly;  that Ontario Ministry of Citizenship & Immigration, United Way and OCASI came together and supported the defunded agencies;  that so many agencies, associations, unions and others wrote letters or took other actions in support and solidarity;  that so many newcomers were willing to stand up with such courage to share the stories of their journeys and how agencies had helped them along the way … what a privilege to have seen all this unfold.

Thank you to the Rewind The Cuts volunteer team of six Seneca @ York graduate students, your energy, enthusiasm and vision on behalf of newcomers has been inspiring.  This journey is not over, please make the settlement funding cuts an election issue by raising it with your candidates and seeking their commitment to reinstate the funding.  Once again, thank you everybody!”

CIC funding cuts update - Executive committee decision

Click on the above letter to read more from Councillor Davis as she responds to the Executive Committee’s lack of action on the CIC funding cuts. Many thanks go out to Councillor Davis for her unrelenting support and efforts to involve the public. Her conviction was a shining light that reassured many that this cause was not only worthy but just.

Update on Monday’s City of Toronto Executive Committee meeting:

The motion was deferred indefinitely, which means they have no intention to make a decision on this (the cuts).   From the beginning the whole matter was carefully orchestrated to allow the issue to die from the City’s perspective, courtesy of Mayor Ford, supporting his Conservative buddies in Ottawa – yes, the same ones who are the first government in our history to be found in contempt of Parliament. How could our Mayor think that what is happening is ok (and that’s not a question).   What a disgraceful show from our City, and on INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION – This slap in the face for Toronto’s new immigrants adds further insult to injury.  They may think they got away with this and its very unfortunate that they fail to see the consequences that will follow shortly thereafter.

Despite these challenges, huge thanks goes out to Councillor Davis and other Councillors who gave their support at the February Council meeting, you are the real champions for Toronto’s newcomers and the agencies who support them.

The following link outlines the committee decision:

03_19 – The Roy Green Show- Jason Ke (2)(2)