How exciting to see the little gold ribbons on our YouTube homepage! The CCPA's YouTube channel is the most viewed non-profit channel in Canada, and the second most subscribed non-profit channel in Canada. Our most popular videos are from the BC Office's 2007 Gala, when Naomi Klein was our keynote speaker. Take a look...
Many of us at the CCPA have been troubled by Canada's reaction to the arrival of 492 Tamil asylum seekers on the MV Sun Sea. Seth Klein, Director of our BC Office, put words to this discomfort in an excellent post on PolicyNote.ca (our blog on BC public policy issues). Seth, son of Vietnam war resisters who fled the US in the 1960s, points out that Canada accepts relatively few refugees -- in 2009 we took in just over 0.1% of the 15 million global refugees. And he argues the real immigration story is the exploding number of "temporary foreign workers" who are brought to Canada each year to work (but not to stay) under highly exploitive conditions. Read his post here...
Applications are now being accepted for the fourth year of Next Up: A Leadership Program for Young People Committed to Social and Environmental Justice.
This is an amazing, intensive and transformative program for young social change activists between the ages of 18 and 32. This year we're excited to announce that the program will operate in three provinces: Next Up BC in Vancouver, Next Up Alberta in Edmonton, and Next Up Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, so please forward this call to your friends and colleagues in those regions. (The CCPA co-hosts the program in BC and Saskatchewan.)
In each province, 13 young people will be selected. Participants will develop life-long relationships, explore different leadership styles, meet some of the province’s leading change-makers, learn new leadership and organizing skills, and be exposed to current and topical social justice issues and progressive governance.
The application deadline for Next Up BC is Sunday Sept 12. The program runs between October 2010 and April 2011.
Please forward this call far and wide — to individuals, organizations, institutions and your progressive networks. Encourage young people you know to apply. Thank you in advance for helping us find the fabulous young leaders for Next Up 2010/11 — you'll be thankful you did years from now!
Application forms and more information can be found at www.nextup.ca.
Check out the new paper by CCPA-BC research associate Shauna Butterwick: Meaningful Training Programs for BC Welfare Recipients. Shauna examined the experiences of welfare recipients participating in two types of pre-employment programs: the BC Employment Program (BCEP) and the Community Assistance Program (CAP). The study makes recommendations for providing more effective and relevant services for people with multiple barriers like addiction, health problems, disability and homelessness.
The CCPA-BC office released another Climate Justice Project brief today, this one finding that greenhouse gas emissions from exported coal and natural gas generate more than double the emissions from combustion within BC. Read the news release and the study...
The CCPA Monitor is the only place I know that one can go to for accurate and honest reporting on the state of the world. I would hate like hell to ever be without The CCPA Monitor; it would be like losing my sight and my hearing. I heartily recommend it to anybody who gives a damn about the condition of the world.
— Farley Mowat