This and That…
We are in the midst of an election that has exposed the ugly underbelly of Canadian racism and Islamophobia clothed in pro-women rhetoric and the hesitation of many of our elected representatives, except for a few brave and principled souls like Calgary Mayor Nenshi who took to the airways to denounce in no uncertain terms the slippery slope of racist wedge politics.
Our sector has looked on from the sidelines for the most part, concerned but unsure about its role as government funded organizations, many with charitable status and who believe, given the experiences of some of their fellow charities in the environment and women's advocacy sectors, that charitable status could be threatened. Others like OCASI debated whether inserting itself in the niqab conversation would give oxygen to issues that are best left to fade away while paying attention to larger social and economic policy issues that have a greater impact on our constituents.
What the last few weeks of the discourse of intolerance has done is to cause an unsettling in the Canadian citizenry, especially amongst those of us who are racialized, immigrant or refugee, Muslim or other religious minority (non-Christian), in other words those who belong to communities that have been historically ‘Othered'. The rights of women to choice over their bodies must be sacrosanct, even when we vehemently disagree with choices some women may make. It is a simple principle and one we have taken for granted as Canadians where women's equality is enshrined in our laws and public policies.
But it would appear that some women are more equal than others. While two of our federal parties have demonized the two niqabi women (playing to the basest instincts of their party members and supporters) who have asserted their right to be veiled while taking the oath of citizenship and which the federal court has backed up, there is a loud silence at best and derision at worst to the request for a national public inquiry on the twelve hundred or so missing and murdered Indigenous women. Since 2012, spouses who are sponsored (primarily women) are subjected to conditional permanent residency for two years. Women and their children fleeing intimate partner abuse have seen funding for the services that support and keep them safe drastically reduced as the federal Department responsible for women's issues has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, even losing the language of equality in its mission. The hypocrisy is glaring.
A couple of weeks ago the government announced that if it were to be re-elected it would undertake a number of measures in response to “barbaric cultural practices” – again the language of division and demonization. And while we may be tempted to turn this on its head and point out barbaric practices, like the lack of clean drinking water in many First Nations and Inuit communities, the exorbitant costs of food, especially fresh food and vegetables in our northern communities, the erasure of women/feminist history and other non- European narratives from the official story of Canada, we know that this phrase is coded language for a particular group of people namely, racialized Muslims.
As part of the initiatives announced (leaving the tip hotline aside, because we trust that women and girls in Canada would know enough to call 911or the various existing hotlines such as assaulted women's hotline if in trouble) the government talked about increased resources to combat human trafficking. No disagreement there, but what is even more pressing for the women (and men) caught up in labour or sex trafficking is the guarantee of a temporary resident visa that would allow them to transition to permanent residency and eventual citizenship if they choose to remain in Canada once they come forward and cooperate with authorities.
If nothing else, this renewed discourse on Canadian values has reminded us that we can take nothing for granted. That rights gained through struggle must be held dear and fought for over and over. That we cannot become complacent and that we must remember that we should always be moving forward on minority rights, on group and individual rights. We must renew ourselves as people, as communities and as a country. We must remember what Canadian feminist Nellie McClung said, “Yesterday's successes will not do for today”.
It is heartening to know that significant numbers of women (and male allies) from different walks of life have come together in various groupings to make public statements against what some of us have called ‘faux feminism'. By speaking up, Canada's feminists from coast to coast to coast are saying ‘not in our names' to the politicians that would fight for an election win on the backs of marginalized women.
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Closer to home we have an opportunity to influence important public policy that will have an impact on the lives of workers, especially workers from marginalized communities.
Province-wide consultations on the Employment Standards Act and the Labour Relations Act have just concluded. These two pieces of legislation govern everything to do with work in Ontario. The legislations as currently written contain many loopholes that allow employers and employment temp agencies to exploit workers on many levels. In some cases whole classification of workers are excluded from the legislation and many face exploitation and wage theft by their employers.
The recent changes by the federal government to the Live-in program while problematic is many respects, did fulfill one of the wishes of many caregivers and the agencies that support them, namely, that it would no longer be mandatory for caregivers to ‘live in' with their employers. This is a significant victory for the advocates and caregivers who have pushed for this change for over a decade. But labour laws in Ontario leave much to be desired and this round of consultations is an ‘opportunity of a generation' as one workers rights advocate put it recently.
The Workers Action Centre (WAC) is very much the civil society lead on these issues and one can argue that the consultations are in part because of the effective lobbying and advocacy they've done over the last few years. Needless to say they have a number of recommendations that OCASI has endorsed and that we are encouraging our members and the broader civil society organizations concerned with fairness and equity in employment to adopt as well. We have attached their report “Still Working on the Edge” which includes their recommendations here for your perusal.
We also encourage you to speak to your Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) about these issues, get their buy-in for effective labour and employment laws reform. With over fifty percent of workers in the GTHA (Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area) having precarious employment with little or no benefits (The Precarity Penalty by McMaster University and United Way Toronto) and knowing we can extrapolate that across the province, with an increasing number of immigrants (especially women and racialized immigrants) being represented in this number, we must speak up and out as a sector. Let's act now to engage with government and opposition MPPs to bring meaningful change for all workers in Ontario.
In Solidarity…