Monthly Archives: September 2021

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With 21 hectares chopped off for the new campus, it's not hard to imagine, in future, someone asking for another piece of land for some complementary project.

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Ottawa residents who are worried about the future of the Central Experimental Farm once the new Civic hospital campus is built, may take comfort in Yasir Naqvis call for legal protection for the city landmark.

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The location of the $2.8-billion hospital on the Experimental Farm near Dows Lake has been met with considerable opposition from many, whose main fear is that the project would open the door to further development. Once its sanctity is breached, it wont be long before the Experimental Farm as we know it, is gone, they argue. They are not entirely wrong.

But Liberal candidate Yasir Naqvis promise to legislate protection of the farm, could be whats needed. His plan drew a rebuke from NDP candidate Angella MacEwen, who pointed out that Naqvi was the ridings MPP when the current site was chosen, and he supported that choice. He cant now pretend to be its saviour. MacEwen believes its not a forgone conclusion that the hospital will be built at the Farm.

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Naqvi indeed supported the current site, but the time to litigate the location is long gone. Whats important is to not lose sight of the larger point Naqvi is making. What I am hearing is the concern that this may be the beginning of further development of the Central Experimental Farm, and what I want to do is legislate to protect it forever, he says.

With 21 hectares chopped off for the new campus, its not hard to imagine, in the near or distant future, someone asking for a piece of land here or there for some complementary project. Besides, hospitals expand, and it is not inconceivable that The Ottawa Hospital itself may someday seek more land for expansion. And its not hard to imagine a future government bending to something of civic importance. Once that happens, the fear is that the Experimental Farm will face death by 1,000 cuts. Will this happen? Probably not in the immediate future. But there is no guarantee. Thats why legal protection from further development is critical.

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For years, many in the city have demanded such protection, to no avail. If someone can lead such a fight in Parliament, it is worth supporting. This should be the commitment of whoever emerges the winner in Ottawa Centre.

The reality is that the new Civic hospital campus is going to be built at the Experimental Farm. The best we can do for it is legislated protection.

Those who oppose the current location tend to forget that when former Conservative cabinet minister John Baird handed over a portion of the Experimental Farm across from the Civic, many objected. The argument then, as now, is the same: The Experimental Farm is sacrosanct, you cant build on it. The National Capital Commissions offer of Tunneys Pasture also faced public disapproval. The Ottawa Hospital board not only rejected the location because of higher building costs; others in the city also objected.

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The truth is, there is no location in Ottawa all 2,790-square-kilometres of it that can be chosen for the Civic, without one group or another objecting. There is no site that would gain universal acceptance. That is the nature of Ottawa, so lets get on with building a 21st-century hospital the city needs.

The parking garage is a different proposition, and the community cant be faulted for its opposition. Residents around the hospital want an underground garage to preserve parkland, and that clearly is the best option. Except for the small matter of the $150 million to $200 million it would cost. Unless someone can come up with the money, its a futile debate to have.

Weve waited too long for this new hospital to be talking about relocation now. Right or wrong, the Experimental Farm is it. There is no turning back. What we can do as a city is make sure the Civic campus is the last development project to ever adorn the Experimental Farm.

Mohammed Adam is an Ottawa journalist and commentator. Reach him at: nylamiles48@gmail.com

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Adam: The hospital will be built. Focus on protecting the rest of Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm - Ottawa Citizen

Sep 11th 2021

BASRA AND TORORO

A WOMAN WHO drives a car will be killed, says Sheikh Hazim Muhammad al-Manshad. He says it matter-of-factly, without raising his voice. The unwritten rules of his tribe, the al-Ghazi of southern Iraq, are clear. A woman who drives a car might meet a man. The very possibility is a violation of her honour. So her male relatives will kill her, with a knife or a bullet, and bury the body in a sand dune.

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The sheikh is a decorous host. He seats his guests on fine carpets, in a hall that offers shade from the desert sun. He bids his son serve them strong, bitter coffee from a shared cup. He wears a covid face-mask.

Yet the code he espouses is brutal. And one aim of that brutality is to enable men to control womens fertility. A daughter must accept the husband her father picks. If she dallies with another man, her male kin are honour-bound to kill them both.

Women mostly stay indoors. Your correspondent visited three Shia tribes in southern Iraq in June, and wandered through their villages. He did not see a single post-pubescent woman.

Oppressing women is not only bad for women; it hurts men, too. It makes societies poorer and less stable, argue Valerie Hudson of Texas A&M University and Donna Lee Bowen and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen of Brigham Young University.

Some Iraqi cities are quite liberal by Middle Eastern standards, but much of the rural hinterland is patriarchal in the strict sense of the word. The social order is built around male kinship groups. The leaders are all men. At home, women are expected to obey husbands, fathers or brothers. At tribal meetings, they are absent. Ill be clear: according to tribal custom, a woman does not have freedom of expression, says Mr Manshad.

The male kinship group has been the basic unit of many, if not most, societies for much of history. It evolved as a self-defence mechanism. Men who were related to each other were more likely to unite against external enemies.

If they married outside the group, it was the women who moved to join their husbands. (This is called patrilocal marriage, and is still common in most of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.) The bloodline was deemed to pass from father to son (this arrangement is called patrilineal). Property and leadership roles also passed down the male line. Daughters were valued for their ability to give birth to sons. Strict rules were devised to ensure womens chastity.

Such rules were designed for a world without modern states to keep order, or modern contraception. In rich, liberal countries, the idea of the male kinship group as the building block of society faded long ago. Elsewhere, it is surprisingly common. As a group that champions an extreme version of it has just seized power in Afghanistan, it is worth looking at how such societies work.

In The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide, Ms Hudson, Ms Bowen and Ms Nielsen rank 176 countries on a scale of 0 to 16 for what they call the patrilineal/fraternal syndrome. This is a composite of such things as unequal treatment of women in family law and property rights, early marriage for girls, patrilocal marriage, polygamy, bride price, son preference, violence against women and social attitudes towards it (for example, is rape seen as a property crime against men?).

Rich democracies do well; Australia, Sweden and Switzerland all manage the best-possible score of zero (see chart). Iraq scores a woeful 15, level with Nigeria, Yemen and (pre-Taliban) Afghanistan. Only South Sudan does worse. Dismal scores are not limited to poor countries (Saudi Arabia and Qatar do terribly), nor to Muslim ones (India and most of sub-Saharan Africa do badly, too). Overall, the authors estimate that 120 countries are still to some degree swayed by this syndrome.

As a patriarch, Mr Manshad is expected to resolve problems his tribesmen bring to him. Many involve bloodshed. Yesterday, he says, he had to sort out a land dispute. Men from another tribe were digging up sand to make cement on a patch of land that both they and Mr Manshads tribe claim. Shooting broke out. A man was hit in the thigh. A truce was called to discuss compensation, mediated by a third tribe. In a separate incident five days ago, three men were killed in a quarrel over a truck. We have many problems like this, sighs the sheikh.

The Iraqi police are reluctant to intervene in tribal murders. The culprit is probably armed. If he dies resisting arrest, his male relatives will feel a moral duty to kill the officer who fired the shot or, failing that, one of his colleagues. Few cops want to pick such a fight. It is far easier to let the tribes sort out their own disputes.

The upshot is that old codes of honour often trump Iraqi law (and also, whisper it, Islamic scripture, which is usually milder). Cycles of vengeance can spiral out of control. Innocent bystanders are being killed, complains Muhammed al-Zadyn, who advises the governor of Basra, a southern city, on tribal affairs. The last gun battle was the day before yesterday, he says. The previous month he had helped resolve a different quarrel, which dated back to a murder in 1995 and had involved tit-for-tat killings ever since. Mr Zadyn has two bullet wounds in his head, inflicted after he decried tribal shakedowns of oil firms.

His phone rings; another feud needs mediation. A woman was accused of having sex outside marriage. So far, seven people have been killed over it, and five wounded in the past few days. Because two of the slain were elders, their kin say they must kill ten of the other tribe to make it even. Mr Zadyn has a busy night ahead.

Clan loyalties can cripple the state. When a clan member gets a job in the health ministry, he may feel a stronger duty to hire his unqualified cousins and steer contracts to his kin than to improve the nations health. This helps explain why Iraqi ministries are so corrupt.

And when the state is seen as a source of loot, people fight over it. Iraq saw five coups between independence in 1932 and Saddam Husseins takeover in 1979; since then it has invaded two neighbours, been invaded by the United States, seen jihadists set up a caliphate, Kurds in effect secede and Shia militias, some backed by Iran, become nearly as powerful as the government. Clearly, not all this can be blamed on patriarchal clans. But it cannot all be blamed on foreigners, either.

Ms Hudson and her co-authors tested the relationship between their patrilineal syndrome and violent political instability. They ran various regressions on their 176 countries, controlling for other things that might foster conflict, such as ethnic and religious strife, colonial history and broad cultural categories such as Muslim, Western and Hindu.

They did not prove that the syndrome caused instabilitythat would require either longitudinal data that have not yet been collected or natural experiments that are virtually impossible with whole countries. But they found a strong statistical link. The syndrome explained three-quarters of the variation in a countrys score on the Fragile States index compiled by the Fund for Peace, a think-tank in Washington. It was thus a better predictor of violent instability than income, urbanisation or a World Bank measure of good governance.

The authors also found evidence that patriarchy and poverty go hand in hand. The syndrome explained four-fifths of the variation in food security, and four-fifths of the variation in scores on the UNs Human Development Index, which measures such things as lifespan, health and education. It seems as if the surest way to curse ones nation is to subordinate its women, they conclude.

The obstacles females face begin in the womb. Families that prefer sons may abort daughters. This has been especially common in China, India and the post-Soviet Caucasus region. Thanks to sex-selective abortion and the neglect of girl children, at least 130m girls are missing from the worlds population, by one estimate.

That means many men are doomed to remain single; and frustrated single men can be dangerous. Lena Edlund of Columbia University and her co-authors found that in China, for every 1% rise in the ratio of men to women, violent and property crime rose by 3.7%. Parts of India with more surplus men also have more violence against women. The insurgency in Kashmir has political roots, but it cannot help that the state has one of most skewed sex ratios in India.

Family norms vary widely. Perhaps the most socially destabilising is polygamy (or, more precisely, polygyny, where a man marries more than one woman). Only about 2% of people live in polygamous households. But in the most unstable places it is rife. In war-racked Mali, Burkina Faso and South Sudan, the figure is more than a third. In the north-east of Nigeria, where the jihadists of Boko Haram control large swathes of territory, 44% of women aged 15-49 are in polygynous unions.

If the richest 10% of men have four wives each, the bottom 30% will have none. This gives them a powerful incentive to kill other men and steal their goods. They can either form groups of bandits with their cousins, as in north-western Nigeria, or join rebel armies, as in the Sahel. In Guinea, where soldiers carried out a coup on September 5th, 42% of married women aged 15-49 have co-wives.

Bride price, a more widespread practice, is also destabilising. In half of countries, marriage commonly entails money or goods changing hands. Most patrilineal cultures insist on it. Usually the resources pass from the grooms family to the brides, though in South Asia it is typically the other way round (known as dowry).

The sums involved are often large. In Tororo district in Uganda, a groom is expected to pay his brides family five cows, five goats and a bit of cash, which are shared out among her male relatives. As a consequence, some men will say: you are my property, so I have the right to beat you, says Mary Asili, who runs a local branch of Mifumi, a womens group.

Bride price encourages early marriage for girls, and later marriage for men. If a mans daughters marry at 15 and his sons at 25, he has on average ten years to milk and breed the cows he receives for his daughters before he must pay up for his sons nuptials. In Uganda, 34% of women are married before the age of 18 and 7% before the age of 15. Early marriage means girls are more likely to drop out of school, and less able to stand up to an abusive husband.

A story from Tororo is typical. Nyadoi (not her real name) waited 32 years to leave her husband, though he once threatened to cut off her head with a hoe. He was the kind of man who marries today, tomorrow and everyday. She was the first wife. When he added a third, her husband sold the iron sheets that Nyadoi had bought to make a new roof. Perhaps he needed the cash for his new wife.

Bride price can make marriage unaffordable for men. Mr Manshad in Iraq complains: Many young men cant get married. It can cost $10,000. Asked if his tribes recent lethal disputes over sand and vehicles might have been motivated by the desire to raise such a sum, he shrugs: It is a basic necessity in life to get married.

Insurgent groups exploit male frustration to recruit. Islamic State gave its fighters sex slaves. Boko Haram offers its troops the chance to kidnap girls. Some Taliban are reportedly knocking on doors and demanding that families surrender single women to wed them.

Patrilineality is sustained by property rules that favour men. To keep assets within the patriline, many societies make it hard for women to own or inherit property. Written laws are often fairer, but custom may trump them. In India, only 13% of land is held by women. Several studies have shown that women who own land have more bargaining power at home and are less likely to suffer domestic violence.

Nyadoi tried to build a small house on the land of her deceased parents, but her cousins told her she could not, because she was a woman. Only when staff from Mifumi interceded at a clan meeting and laid out her rights under Ugandan law did her relatives let her have a small patch of land. She now lives there, away from her husband. She sobs as she recalls all the suffering for so many yearsfighting, beatings, cuttings, being chased away.

Home matters. If boys see their fathers bully their mothers, they learn to bully their future wives. They may also internalise the idea that might makes right, and apply it in the public sphere. Ms Hudson argues that if women are subject to autocracy and terror in their homes, society is also more vulnerable to these ills.

Yet there are reasons for optimism. Globally, patrilineal culture is in retreat. The selective abortion of girls is declining. The male-to-female ratio at birth peaked in China and India and has fallen since. In South Korea, Georgia and Tunisia, which used to have highly skewed sex ratios, it has fallen back to roughly the natural rate.

Child marriage is falling, too. Since 2000 more than 50 countries have raised the legal minimum age of marriage to 18. Globally, 19% of women aged 20-24 were married by 18 and 5% by 15, according to Unicef, the UNs childrens fund, but that is down from 31% and more than 10% in 2000. Polygyny is less common than it was, and often unpopular even where it is widespread, because of the harm it does to women and non-elite men. Womens groups have pushed for bans in countries such as India, Uganda, Egypt and Nigeria.

Even in rural Iraq, some sexist traditions are in retreat. Mr Manshad says it is no longer acceptable for men to pay blood debts by handing over a daughter. It is haram [sinful], he says, though local feminists say it still goes on.

Other trends that help include urbanisation and pensions. When women move to cities, they earn higher wages and increase their clout at home. Their clan ties tend to loosen, too, since they live surrounded by non-members.

When the state provides pensions, old people no longer depend so completely on their children to support them. This weakens the logic of patrilineality. If parents do not need a son to take care of them, they may not desire one so fervently, or insist so forcefully that he and his wife live with them. They may even feel sanguine about having a daughter.

That is what happened in South Korea, the country that in modern times has most rapidly dismantled a patrilineal system. In 1991 it equalised male and female inheritance rights, and ended a husbands automatic right to custody of the children after divorce. In 2005 the legal notion of a single (usually male) head of household was abolished. In 2009 a court found marital rape unconstitutional. Meanwhile, increased state pensions sharply reduced the share of old Koreans who lived with, and depended on, their sons. And among parents, one of the worlds strongest preferences for male babies switched within a generation to a slight preference for girls.

The change was so fast that it prompted a backlash among bewildered men. By comparison, it took ages for patrilineal culture to wither in the West, though it started much earlier, when the Catholic church forbade polygamy, forced and cousin marriage and the disinheritance of widows in the seventh century.

Individual attitudes can evolve. In Uganda, which has seen five violent changes of government since independence and invaded most of its neighbours, 49% of women and 41% of men tell pollsters that it is sometimes acceptable for a man to beat his wife. But this rate is in decline.

In the northern district of Lira, which is still recovering from a long war against rebels of the Lords Resistance Army, domestic violence is rampant, says Molly Alwedo, a social worker. But it is falling. She credits the REAL Fathers Initiative, a project designed by Save the Children, a charity, and the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University. It offers older male mentors to young fathers to improve their parenting and relationship skills.

Gary Barker of Promundo, an NGO that promotes such mentoring globally, says: Theres always a cohort of men who say, wait a minute, I don't believe in these [sexist] norms. [They see the] consequences for their mums and their sisters. It is local dissidents, rather than parachuting Westerners, who make the best messengers. Mentors do not tell young men their attitudes are toxic. They get them to talk; about what happens in their homes and whether it is fair. Peers swap tips on how to control their anger.

It doesnt work everywhere. But a randomised controlled trial with 1,200 Ugandan fathers found that such efforts resulted in a drop in domestic violence. Emmanuel Ekom, a REAL Fathers graduate, used to come home drunk and quarrel until morning, says his wife, Brenda Akong. Now he does jobs he once scorned as womens work, such as collecting firewood and water. One day she came home and discovered him cooking dinner.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "The cost of oppressing women"

Continued here:

Societies that treat women badly are poorer and less stable - The Economist

A teepee set up on the lawn of Parliament Hill to receive walkers of Blinding Light Walk Tiger Lily, who walked from Sudbury to Ottawa to call for changes to the Indian Act, in Ottawa, on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021. (Photo: The Canadian Press / Justin Tang)

One of the first things to learn about Indigenous communities is that we are not alike. Supporters of decolonization resist the idea that we are a singular voting block. Yet there are some shared concerns and major issues in Indigenous communities that are of importance for everyone going to the polls this September.

The discovery of graves and the uneven implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action, not to mention the more than 51 long-term boil water advisories for First Nations across Canada, show that there is still work to be done.

In May, the country was shaken by the news of 215 bodies of Indigenous children found on the site of a former Kamloops residential school, tangible proof of the mistreatment of Indigenous children at boarding schools. Truth and Reconciliation commissioner Justice Murray Sinclair has told media that the commission documented the deaths of over 6000 residential school children. The bodies of Indigenous children are still being uncovered at residential schools so there is not a final number at this time.

These findings from ground-penetrating radar further reinforced what survivors told the TRC. However, a June poll by Abacus data reported that almost 70 per cent of Canadians said they had been unaware of the severity of abuses in the residential school system until the graves were found.

The repatriation of childrens bodies to their communities is a priority for the communities affected.

The process of identifying remains isnt something to be rushed, says Dr. Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archeology at the University of Alberta. For most First Nations it is a journey, she says. The first stage is not to go out using ground-penetrating radar to look for graves. Theres a lot of background that needs to happen in terms of bringing together communities and providing supports for survivors trying to come to a consensus about what should happen.

Despite the headlines and attention when the news of grave sites first broke, the findings of grave sites and the grief of communities has not remained on the front pages of newspapers, and it also hasnt been a prevalent election issue.

In July, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh visited the Kamloops former residential school: I just wanted to get a better sense of what it was like, he said. At a press conference that day, Singh reiterated that the NDP is committed to implementing the 94 calls to action in the TRC report. He also called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt federal court appeals that are currently taking place, in an effort to reverse two Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders concerning discrimination against Indigenous children. And he said the NDP is committed to providing more funding for Indigenous communities, and will work to address the harms done from intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools.

Conservative leader Erin OToole was asked about his position on the flags on federal buildings, which Trudeau has said shall remain at half-mast in honour of children who died at residential schools until further notice. OToole told reporters he believes, We should be proud to put our flag back up.He continued, Ive been talking to Indigenous leaders since I became Opposition leader. Reconciliation will be important for me, as will be pride in Canada Its not a time to tear down Canada, its a time to recommit to build it to be the country we know it can be. And reconciliation is very important and should be important to all Canadians.

The Conservative platform commits to implementing TRC calls to action 71 through 76, which relate to missing Indigenous children and releasing burial information about the students who died in care. The platform also commits to funding the investigation of all former residential schools in Canada where unmarked graves may be found.

Trudeau met with Chief Cadmus Delorme in Saskatchewan, where 751 unmarked graves were found at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School. In a media statement, Trudeau said, The hurt and the trauma that you feel is Canadas responsibility to bear, and the government will continue to provide Indigenous communities across the country with the funding and resources they need to bring these terrible wrongs to light. While we cannot bring back those who were lost, we canand we willtell the truth of these injustices, and we will forever honour their memory.

In 2015, Trudeau promised to reset relations between Canada and Indigenous people. That is a pretty vague promise, and many feel that he has not fulfilled his promises to Indigenous people. One of the major campaign promises was fulfilled: a 2019 inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. The 2021 Liberal platform now says that the Liberals will confront the legacy of residential schools by providing funding for research for discovering unmarked graves.

Before his first election victory in 2015, Trudeau had also promised to address all 94 calls to action set out by the TRC report, but as of last year had covered only eight, according to the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nation-led think tank.

In July, as the country was gripped by an unprecedented heat wave, a major new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released, and a grim picture of the reality of climate change became even clearer to Canadians. (Chatelaine covered this subject and its connection to the 2021 election here.) However, five months before the IPCC made international news, Indigenous Climate Action, an Indigenous-led organization concerned about climate change, released a report titled Decolonizing Climate Policy in Canada. The report notes that although Indigenous people are referenced repeatedly in discussions on climate change, many of the policies put forth by the Trudeau government conflict with federal commitments to engage with First Nations in a way that upholds their rights to self-determination. Issues around land sovereignty and pipeline expansion through Indigenous communities still need to be addressed by all Canadian political parties.

The report states, The Federal climate plans egregiously fail to address the fossil fuel industry as a driver of climate change, a violator of Indigenous rights, and a major contributor to the vulnerabilization of Indigenous communities and Nations by way of impacts on waters, lands, livelihoods and food systems.

Many of the issues Indigenous communities face are interconnected, which Trudeau noted on a panel on gender equality he spoke at in Argentina. What does a gender lens have to do with building this new highway or this new pipeline? Well, there are impacts when you bring construction workers into a rural areathere are social impacts because they are mostly male construction workers. How are you adjusting or adapting to those [impacts]? asked Trudeau. He was widely mocked in conservative media.

The authors of the final report of the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Womens inquiry agree with him. In a section on economic insecurity and government neglect in Inuit Nunangat, the 2019 report notes that extractive development can pose additional threats to Inuit womens security, as the high number of transient workers at mining camps can create working and living environments where sexual harassment and abuse of Inuit women take place. Statistics reveal that Indigenous women represent only 4 percent of the Canadian population in 2016, but they comprised nearly 50 percent of victims of human trafficking. (Approximately one-quarter of human trafficking victims are are under the age of 18.)

At the same time, some Indigenous communities are supportive of oil and gas projects, as they provide funding and resources to their community. One such place is Enoch Cree First Nation. There, Chief Billy Morin attended a blessing ceremony when the reserve became a stockpile site for the Trans Mountain pipeline. In Alberta, where the economy is tied to oil and gas revenues, many Indigenous leaders often speak out in favour of extraction industries.

This aligns particularly well with the Conservative platform, which focuses on working with Indigenous-led businesses. Their policy pledges to work with organizations, such as the First Nations Major Project Coalition, the Indigenous Resource Network, the Indian Resource Council, the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers, the National Coalition of Chiefs, and First Nations LNG Alliance, to support communities that wish to become partners in natural resource extraction.

The NDP promise to ensure that Indigenous people in Canada will get a seat at the table when it comes to discussions about the environment and conservation. The platform reads that a New Democrat government will work jointly with Indigenous leadership and communities to develop coordinated action plans to respond to climate change emergencies like wildfires and floods. This work will be informed by Indigenous traditional and ecological knowledge and legal systems, and include improving existing infrastructure, developing new infrastructure and supporting response efforts to keep people safe.

Indigenous people dont vote as a monolith, and many who live on-reserve may have a viewpoint based on what they have experienced, but the prosperity and health of their communities is a concern that should be shared by everyone. None of the political parties agree to match funding to First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities with the money spent on developing Canadian infrastructure, but the Liberals and NDP do promise increased funding in these areas.

Jesse Wente, an Anishinaabe writer, broadcaster and artist, describes the Land Back movement this way: Its about self-determination for our Peoples here that should include some access to the territories and resources in a more equitable fashion, and for us to have control over how that actually looks.

Land Back emerged after Idle No More and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It asks Canada to live up to the treaty agreements that Indigenous people signed with the representatives of the Crown in Canada, many of which were to share the land and water as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the river flows, as many Elders say.

Treaties are constitutionally recognized agreements between the Crown and Indigenous people. For the Indigenous people who signed these agreements, they are considered sacred, living pacts. There were 70 treaties signed between First Nations and the Crown between 1701 and 1923. There have been about 25 modern treaties signed since 1975.

Land Back is also concerned with regions that are not included in existing treaties, including the Atlantic provinces, areas of British Columbia, eastern Ontario and Quebec, many of which are now the subject of land titles disputes and treaty negotiations moving through the Canadian courts. Indigenous land ownership is a complex legal situation that can differ from province to province, but most Indigenous communities point to the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada William decision, which recognized aboriginal title of the Tsilhqotin nation to 1,750 square kilometres of their land in central British Columbia, acknowledging the nations right to use and manage the land and to reap its economic benefits.

Many of those disputes are related to resource extraction and climate change. In 2014, Atikamewkw First Nation declared sovereignty over its territory, which covers 80,000 square kilometres in Quebec. Chief Christian Awashish and a few dozen community members from Opitciwan First Nation (one of three Atikamekw communities) filed a provincial lawsuit in 2019 to settle a land claim that has been in negotiation for 40 years. The Atikamekw never signed a treaty, and yet their villages were flooded in 1918 to create dams.

A few weeks ago, hereditary Wetsuweten chiefs spoke to The Tyee about two recent spills that have contaminated their territory, the site of a hotly disputed natural gas pipeline. Construction is currently ongoing on the 670-kilometre pipeline in northern British Columbia, where the Unisttoten resistance camp was set up in January 2020, before being a January 7 RCMP raid on their barricades, and an additional raid in February where four people were arrested.

The Oil and Gas Commission never informed us at all about the recent spills, says Mike Ridsdale, an environmental assessment coordinator who represents the Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs. Theyre supposed to be working with us. For them to let me know two to three days later is not being right on the ball. Even on the report, it said that the Wetsuweten were notified. I have no messages and no emails.

Land negotiations are of massive importance to local communities. And while many nations disagree among themselves over the best course of action, all Indigenous communities know the importance of being able to make independent decisions about where they live. Many believe that questions of resource development and sustainability should be answered by the people it most affects.

None of the major political parties address the issue of Indigenous land sovereignty and governance in their platforms directly. The NDP come the closest, with their statement that they are committed to good-faith, consent-based engagement and negotiations consistent with the Tsilhqotin decision, an approach that honours Canadas legal and constitutional obligation.

Theres no one Indigenous issue, there are many complex problems facing the communities and Indigenous people and allies have a lot to think about as they go to the polls. Choose wisely!

Originally posted here:

What You Need To Know About The Biggest Indigenous Issues This Election - Chatelaine

TORONTO -- More than half of Canadians say that they are not comfortable or somewhat not comfortable with having more private health care options, according to new polling from Nanos Research.

The poll, conducted by Nanos Research and sponsored by CTV News and The Globe and Mail, found that 30 per cent of Canadians are not comfortable with having more private health care options and 23 per cent are somewhat not comfortable, totalling 53 per cent of those surveyed.

However, of those surveyed, 30 per cent said they were comfortable with greater privatized health care while 14 percent reported being somewhat comfortable. According to the poll, three per cent of Canadians said they were unsure.

Nanos reported that residents of the Prairies are more likely to be comfortable with increased private health care options compared to other provinces (48 per cent). Those who said they would be uncomfortable with this were mostly found in Quebec (55 per cent) and Ontario (57 per cent).

The poll found that men are more likely to be comfortable with increased private health care services at 37 per cent compared to 24 per cent of women.

As well, 49 per cent of Canadians said that having more private health care options will make the country's health care system weaker while 34 per cent said this would make the system stronger.

According to the polling, those who live in the Prairies (46 per cent) are more likely to say it will strengthen the system than residents of other provinces.

Only nine per cent reported that there would be no impact to the overall health care system, and eight per cent said they were unsure.

The poll found that men were more likely to say privatized health care options would make the system stronger (40 per cent) compared to women (28 per cent).

Canada has a universal health care system, which is paid for through taxes, and provides coverage for necessary health services on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay.

While all of the party leaders support universal health care, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole has also advocated for privatized options that go much further than, or is contrary to, what other parties support.

On the party's election platform, the Conservatives say they will partner with the private sector rather than over-rely on government. We know that there are some things best done by the private sector and will be faster to reach out for help.

However, OToole has been generally vague about what kind of medical care could be privatized

The new polling from Nanos also found that Canadians are more likely to prefer subsidized child-care spaces (50 per cent), such as those proposed by the Liberal and NDP parties, than a tax deduction on child-care expenses (40 per cent), like that promised by the Conservative Party.

Of those surveyed, 10 per cent of Canadians said they were unsure of which child-care plan they would prefer.

According to the polling, those who reside in Atlantic Canada are more likely to prefer subsidized child-care spaces at 62 per cent, while those living in the Prairies prefer a tax deduction at 55 per cent.

Women are more likely to prefer the proposals for subsidized child-care spaces (52 per cent), while those between the ages of 18 and 34 (56 per cent) also favoured this promise over a tax deduction on child-care expenses.

The Liberals have promised to reduce fees for child care by 50 per cent, on average, in the next year and introduce $10 a day daycare within five years. Like the Liberals, the NDP are promising a $10 a day child-care system across Canada, although the timeline for it has not been made clear.

Instead of a universal child-care program, the Conservatives are promising a refundable tax credit of between $4,500 and $6,000 per child, with an aim to cover up to 75 per cent of the cost of child care for low-income families.

Nanos conducted an RDD dual frame (land-and cell-lines) hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,029 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between August 28 and 30, 2021 as part of an omnibus survey. Participants were randomly recruited by telephone using live agents and administered a survey online. The sample included both land- and cell-lines across Canada. The results were statistically checked and weighted by age and gender using the latest Census information and the sample is geographically stratified to be representative of Canada. Individuals were randomly called using random digit dialling with a maximum of five call backs.

The margin of error for this survey is 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. This study was commissioned by CTV News and the Globe and Mail and the research was conducted by Nanos Research.

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More than half of Canadians uncomfortable with private health care options: Nanos - CTV News