quickfix
random links for run.likethewind.ca
quickfixThe Star » Roma refugee complained of chest pain, Toronto inquest told:
“A Roma refugee who died of heart failure in immigration detention was thought to be faking chest pains to avoid his imminent deportation, a Toronto inquest has heard. A visibly frail Jan Szamko was spotted in the immigration holding centre on Rexdale Blvd., soiled in his own feces and urine, on Dec. 6, 2009, just hours before his scheduled removal flight. […] “I was explaining to him to stop the behaviour and ‘go with some dignity and clean up yourself,’ ” Canada Border Service Agency officer Steven Bean testified at Szamko’s inquest Monday. “If you don’t stop, you are going to be transferred to a jail. You are still going to be removed,” the border officer recalled telling Szamko.”
Toronto Star » Skin colour matters in access to good jobs:
“Based on 2006 long-form Census data, researchers found visible minority Canadian workers earned 81.4 cents for every dollar paid to their Caucasian counterparts. That’s according to a report by two major think tanks, the Wellesley Institute and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. […] What is most troublesome, Block said, is that visible minorities were so under-represented in public administration, where 92 per cent of workers were white. In 2006, 16.2 per cent of Canadians were part of a visible minority group, and that rate is expected to double by 2031.”
The Star article breaks down income by ethnic group. You can also check out the original article on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives website.
The Star » Refugee board defends adjudicators:
“The findings have already cast doubt on IRB member David McBean’s ability to judge fairly; McBean rejected all his asylum cases since his 2007 appointment — 62 in 2010, 72 in 2009 and 35 in 2008.
On Friday, lawyer Max Berger asked McBean to recuse himself from the board at a hearing for one of Berger’s clients — a request McBean declined. “I felt that given that he has accepted zero refugee claims over a three-year period, which (McBean) conceded was accurate, my client didn’t have a reasonable chance to have his claim accepted,” said Berger.”
That’s 169 — the number of refugees who sought asylum under McBean, and the number of people he rejected.
Vancouver Sun » Canadian kids denied basic services:
Across the country, hundreds and possibly thousands, of Canadian-born children are being denied access to the most basic services -a home, food, health care and schooling. They are being denied these necessities because their fathers abused their immigrant mothers, their mothers fled the relationship, and the fathers then reneged on promises to sponsor the women for permanent residency. […] Half of the women at that transition house are undocumented. A boy who should be in Grade 2 is among the Canadian-born children living there. He has never gone to school. The B.C. School Act requires that the child’s parent be able to produce proof that they are legally living in Canada. Because his mother has no residency visa, schools require that she pay the equivalent of a foreign student’s fee. But not only is the little boy denied his constitutional right to an education, he’s also not eligible for health care coverage as long as he lives with his mother.”
Embassy » Jim Creskey » ‘Generous’ refugee system an embarrassment: “If more Canadians really understood how their country’s “generous” refugee family reunification program really works, they would be embarrassed by its inefficiency and callousness. They would also be surprised at the amount of money collected and kept from applicants that are rejected.”
Colorlines » Fourteen States Weighing Bills Modeled After Arizona’s SB 1070
“The SB 1070 copycat laws now introduced across the country all look similar, though most have been tweaked to make them even more draconian. In four states—Indiana, Utah, Mississippi and Kentucky—at least one chamber of the legislature has passed an SB 1070-style bill. In 10 states considering bills—California, Georgia, Illinois, Florida, Maine, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas—the legislation is still in the committee process. […] All of this legislation puts the Obama administration in a tricky position, both politically and legally. Many state lawmakers are crafting their bills to avoid the expensive, unattractive lawsuits that SB 1070-copycat bills will likely draw from the feds. They’ve couched their legislation within the confines of existing federal deportation programs.”
London Review of Books » Adam Shatz » After Egypt:
”In the United States, the revolts were jarring: non-sequiturs in a conversation that, ten years after 11 September, continues to dwell on the threat of radical Islam. […] All of a sudden it is Washington, not the Middle East, that appears stagnant. The revolts in Tunisia and Egypt – and the proliferating signs of unrest in the American sphere of influence in the Middle East – have occurred in spite of American power, not because of it, and they have left the US looking confused and isolated.”
I don’t agree with all of this article, but it’s definitely a must-read.
CTV » Judge slams ‘abuse of process’ in Tamil detentions:
‘A federal court judge has chewed out government lawyers for using tactics in court that would keep Tamil migrants in jail indefinitely. […] “It’s frustrating,” said Chand. “I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve gotten someone released three times and they’re still in their prison reds. It’s cruel and unusual.” Chand said the decision is a sign that the government’s zeal to keep the Tamils in prison on suspicions of being involved in a terrorist organization is leading to illegal shortcuts.’
The Star » Race, gender remain workplace barriers in Ontario, Census data reveal:
“A new report based on 2005 Census data being released Thursday, shows that visible minorities in Ontario are far more likely to live in poverty, have trouble finding a job and earn less in the workplace. […] The report points to the urgent need for Ontario to re-introduce employment equity legislation that was dropped in the mid 1990s, Block said.”
Globe and Mail » Gerald Caplan » Stephen Harper’s worst enemy
“Every time I hear Michael Ignatieff shrieking at the Prime Minister to fire Ms. Oda I want to scream back: THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEV ODA. Of course she baldly lied, just as Jason Kenney lied about Kairos policy on Israel and Tony Clement lied when he claimed Statscan approved his crusade against the long-form census. This government lies as routinely as it maligns, and it never apologizes. But Ms. Oda, like Messrs. Kenney and Clement, is just the organ grinder’s monkey. Any CIDA minister would have been in the same boat. She just follows orders. And it’s those orders in the Kairos case that remind us of the real Harper agenda.
The issue here is the reversal, by Stephen Harper, of a 60-year consensus shared by all previous governments about the central role of civil society in Canada. Every previous government has funded civil society groups and NGOs even when they espoused policies that contradicted the government’s own. Governments might have done so grudgingly and not as generously as some of us hoped. But it has been one of the quiet glories of Canadian democracy that our governments have often backed groups that criticized them or had competing priorities.
No more.”
International Harm Reduction Association » IHRA joins International Coalition Intervening to save Vancouver Safe-Injection Site:
“An international coalition of harm reduction experts — comprised of the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and CACTUS Montréal — has today been granted intervener status to appear before the Supreme Court of Canada to support Insite, Vancouver’s supervised injection site, against the Canadian government’s attempts to shutter it. […]
Adding insult to injury, a 2009 provincially funded report acknowledging the benefits of safe-injection sites and calling for their implementation was recently revealed to have been suppressed for a full year by Quebec’s Minister of Health. Despite this climate of resistance, CACTUS has announced its intention to open a supervised injection site in Montréal later this year.”
Globe and Mail » Armine Yalnizyan » Canada’s immigration policy: Who is on the guest list?:
“This week, the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship rightly noted that immigrants are Canada’s ticket to economic growth in the coming years. The untold story is this: Canada’s growing reliance on newcomers is increasingly turning to temporary foreign workers — “guest workers” — rather than new immigrants and future citizens to propel growth. […] But there’s a danger in allowing employers, alone, to define Canada’s immigration policy: Employers are increasingly looking for average workers, not skilled labour. Cheap labour, that is. Workers who increasingly depend on the goodwill of their employer rather than the rule of law.”
The Lawyers Weekly » Funding orders must be exceptional, says the Supreme Court:
‘For the first time the Supreme Court has ruled that superior courts are empowered to order governments to fund public interest litigation before statutory courts and tribunals. […]
Brodsky suggested that “if governments don’t want the courts to attempt to deal with the problems that have been created by cuts to access-to-justice programs, then governments need to address the gaps themselves.”
She told The Lawyers Weekly “the possibility of obtaining an interim cost award can never replace the Court Challenges Program, or civil legal aid programs, that have been decimated in places like B.C. The limitations of the case-by-case cost-seeking approach are underscored by the decision in Caron in that the court confirmed that interim cost awards must be ‘highly exceptional.’ However, in reality, the circumstances in which the absence of public funding works a serious injustice are not highly exceptional. Such circumstances have become very ordinary in Canada.”’
Mia Mingus » Changing the Framework: Disability Justice. How our communities can move beyond access to wholeness:
“Disability is framed as lacking, sad and undesirable: a shortcoming at best, a tragedy at worst. Disabled people are used as the poster children of environmental injustice or the argument for abortion rights. For many people, even just the idea that we can understand disability as “not wrong” is a huge shift in thinking. […] We must, however, move beyond access by itself. We cannot allow the liberation of disabled people to be boiled down to logistics. We must understand and practice an accessibility that moves us closer to justice, not just inclusion or diversity. […] With disability justice, we want to move away from the “myth of independence,” that everyone can and should be able to do everything on their own. I am not fighting for independence, as much of the disability rights movement rallies behind. I am fighting for an interdependence that embraces need and tells the truth: no one does it on their own and the myth of independence is just that, a myth.”
The Guardian » Chinese workers in Israel sign no-sex contract:
“Chinese workers at a company in Israel have been forced to agree not to have sex with or marry Israelis as a condition of getting a job. According to a contact they are required to sign, male workers may not have any contact with Israeli women - including prostitutes, a police spokesman, Rafi Yaffe, said. He said there was nothing illegal about the requirement and that no investigation had been opened. […] The labourers are also forbidden from engaging in any religious or political activity. The contract states that offenders will be sent back to China at their own expense.”
