Letter to Minister MacLeod

Office for Systemic Justice

Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada

London, ON, N6A 4X3

August 1, 2018

The Honourable Lisa MacLeod

Minister of Children, Community and Social Services,

Queens Park, Toronto ON M7A 1E9

Dear Minister MacLeod,

We are writing to urge the Ontario government to restore the Basic Income Pilot Project and the planned 3% increase to OW and ODSP benefits.

In April 2018, the Toronto Star reported that the Ford Campaign guaranteed it would keep the Basic Income Pilot Project.  The people participating in this program have made life-altering decisions based on the guarantee that this income would be available for a 3-year period.  People have gone back to school, found safe housing, started job-training programs and re-connected with the wider community.  Simple fairness demands that they be allowed to complete this pilot project.  The completion and review of the project also will enable the Ontario government to take an evidence-based approach to employment participation in Ontario.

Rolling back the increase to OW and ODSP from 3% to 1.5% means that, once again, the increase will fall below the rate of inflation.  This means recipients will fall further behind and be further marginalized from participation in the Ontario economy and society.  This decision doesn’t just hurt Ontarians who received these benefits, it hurts our economy and society.  Past research studies have shown that such marginalizing policies increase health care costs, exacerbate mental health concerns, erode a person’s capacity to participate in the labour market and tear apart the fabric of our communities.  Given that the tax cuts will offer most Ontario families only about $18 extra per year, the painful costs of these tax cuts are not worth it.

Finally, we call on the Ontario government to cease immediately the scapegoating rhetoric about fraud amongst recipients of social assistance.  When this harmful rhetoric was used in the 1990s, police investigated and found that the rate of fraud was, in fact, quite low; lower than tax fraud among the general population and lower than corporate fraud.  

We measure well-being and progress in Ontario not by increasing the wealth of the wealthiest but by ensuring that each of us has access to the resources and opportunities which are fundamental to participation in our society.  We expect all levels of government to work collaboratively to make this a reality.

We Were Wrong

As a child, homosexuality to me was a weird entity spoken of in secrecy among friends.  As an adolescent and young adult, I viewed homosexuality as a moral failing and I was oblivious to the concept of transgender.  As a counselling student, my beliefs and opinions were challenged. In a conversation among colleagues the sadness with which a physician spoke of doing exit physical examinations of suspected homosexuals being forced out of the armed forces raised new questions for me to ponder. We all have memories of malicious attacks on homosexuals in city parks and of the infamous “bath house” invasion by police in Toronto. But social norms have changed, politically and socially even if the evolution of our attitudes and beliefs is still a metamorphosis in process rather than an achievement. On November 28, 2017, the Premier of Canada declared “We were wrong” and delivered a heartfelt public apology for the mistreatment of LGBTQ people in Canada.  The Government announced a $145-million compensation settlement and a promise to expunge convictions for the crime of being gay. Our changing perception of gender differences is far from universal or free of conflict. Still, the rapidity of this social evolution within such a short period of time in our country is startling and hopeful.

Disparate beliefs and attitudes are sources of division, violence, and conflict in our world today. Persecution of ethnic minorities in some cases constitutes genocides; mass rape of women by soldiers is used as a weapon of war; we are witnesses to the greatest forced migration of persecuted minorities in the history of the world. Canadians are not exempt from xenophobia as is evident in our historical treatment of blacks, Indigenous peoples, Jews, and immigrants or the struggle to honour our French and English heritage. Our Jewish citizens are still the most frequent targets of persecution and there exists significant opposition to refugees. Yet our difficulties are minor in comparison to problems in many other countries. The efforts of our Government and ordinary citizens to welcome and care for refugees and immigrants has been outstanding. Perhaps our history of forming a nation out of our English and French forbears has increased our capacity to welcome people from other nations. Although there is ample room for improvement we are well positioned to contribute to peace in our world. As ordinary citizens and as a nation we have an obligation to use our strengths in asking our Country and our world  a home where all are welcome and accepted as equals. This begins with some soul searching – reflecting on our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. Our actions spring from our beliefs of who we truly are, human beings created by God who owe to others respect for whom they are: human beings created by God.

Pat McKeon, CSJ

This Christmas Season is Rich with Song and Symbol!

The Christmas season is rich with song and symbol. Today being the 9^th day of Christmas as we count along to the feast of the Epiphany, a dancing image emerges in 9 ladies dancing. (8 maids a-milking, 7 swans a-swimming, 6 geese a-laying, 5 golden rings, 4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle-doves and a partridge in a pear tree!!!)

It is the dancing image that attracted me today, because there is reason to rejoice. We received word from our Office for Systemic Justice through Sue Wilson, CSJ, that it is a time to celebrate. In my words it is a time to dance. Why? Because there is a little bit of justice and peace being born in our world. In the midst of darkness light is radiating hope.

The darkness is the environmental and human-rights abuses that occur in countries where our Canadian-owned mining companies are operative.

The light: in December 2017, a spokesperson for Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced that the Ombudsperson’s Office will open in early 2018 – something many of our Sisters and Associates/Companions have  been lobbying for by joining the wider collective of concerned citizens who have urged the Canadian government to implement an Ombudsperson for the extractive (mining) sector in Canada. This office will have an “advisory and robust investigative mandate”. 

Many Canadians have been writing letters, and attending meetings to raise their concerns about the lack of accountability for these injustices.

With projects in over 100 countries, Canada is home to half of the world’s mining and mineral exploration companies. The current mechanism to address issues is ineffective in that the participation of the extractive-sector companies is voluntary and complaints are never made public. This new Ombudsperson would investigate allegations, make recommendations to the mining companies and the Canadian government. The Office would be independent of political or corporate influence and accountable to Canadians through public reporting.

Numerous Canadians have been urging the government for this change recognizing that the current policy does not reflect our Canadian values. As one bishop has stated: “We cannot accept the unethical way Canadian mining companies have been operating in Latin America or other regions of the world, taking the absence of effective regulatory schemes as a reason to shirk their ethical responsibilities.”

So the news of the early 2018 Office opening is indeed cause to dance. And this dance reflects the energy and movement of not a beautiful soloist, but that of a multitude of persons, joining together in effort to create a new pattern of hope.

It is stated that the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” held a hidden message for persecuted people in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  The number 9 represented the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.

So on this 9^th day of Christmas, we rejoice that many of these 9 fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, have shaped our character and values, bringing light into the darkness. And so we dance in the light of Christ, rejoicing in a micro-incarnation of peace and justice on earth.

Sources:

www.kairoscanada.org/what-we-do/ecological-justice/open4justice

www.cccb.ca/site/eng/media-room/statements-a-letters/4773

Sue Wilson CSJ, Office for Systemic Justice

Blogger: Loretta Manzara, CSJ, musician striving to affect change in the world, one hymn at a time.

Write for Rights 2017

On the 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people around the world again took part in Amnesty International’s global write-a-thon. Known as the Write for Rights, people write letters to convince government officials to release people imprisoned for expressing their opinion, and to end other human rights abuses.

This is the sixth year that the Sisters of St. Joseph in London have taken part in Write for Rights. This year, the Sisters wrote a total of 74 letters and 61 postcards to add to the global total. As of December 12, there were 1,304,742 letters, emails, petitions and cards sent by letter writers from all around the world.

To learn more about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, please visit: http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

To support Amnesty International, please visit: https://www.amnesty.ca/

Guest Blogger Mary Kosta, Archivist, Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada 

Becoming a Blue Community!

The video we just posted on the homepage of  our website promotes becoming a Blue Community. Sisters of St. Joseph across Canada have recently signed on to becoming a “Blue Community”.  What does this mean?  We are joining with The Council of Canadians under the leadership of Maude Barlow, along with CUPE (Canadians Union of Public Employees) and the Blue Planet Project acknowledging that water is a human right for all. This may see obvious to some, but we want to make that statement as real and practical as possible.  It is a way of seeing that everything is interdependent. We call this integral ecology. Specifically, it means seeing water as a human right for all. 

Some practical ways this is applied means that we will not use bottled water in our communities and at our events. We will also work to ensure that water does not get sold to multinational corporations and remains a publicly owned commodity belonging to all citizens in our country. We also support all efforts to bring clean potable water to all indigenous communities across Canada.

Water is a right, a political issue, an economic issue, a spiritual issue. More and more we see that it is also a global issue affecting communities around the world. We join this movement because we want to say we stand with those who see that water, as a source of life, is interconnected and related to all life on our Blue Planet. We think we are in good company. 

Joan Atkinson, CSJ