Law and legal issues
Inside this issue:
Over the past five years, exercise of the fundamental freedom of speech in Canada has been curbed and discouraged by a federal government increasingly intolerant of even the mildest criticism or dissent. Particularly affected have been organizations dependent on government funding which advocate for human rights and women’s equality. Their voices have been stifled, some completely silenced, by cuts to their budgets.
There are few values at the heart of any vibrant democratic society more important than the right and the ability to speak out freely, to disagree, and to advocate for differing points of view. These rights lie at the heart of freedom and liberty that underpins democracy.
This report draws on 2006 Census data to compare work and income trends among racialized and non-racialized Canadians. The authors find that the work racialized Canadians are able to attain is more likely to be insecure, temporary and low paying, and that despite an increasingly diverse population, a colour code is firmly in place.
Watch the video below (featuring the report's authors, Grace-Edward Galabuzi and Sheila Block) to find out more about the gap facing Canada's racialized workers:
In June 2010, the Harper government released a consultation paper which asked Canadians to comment on the possible impacts of increased foreign direct investment in the Canadian telecommunications sector. Although the paper clearly promoted potential economic benefits, the potential risks (which would not be confined to economic impacts) were absent from the analysis.
When Stephen Harper’s former (and perhaps future?) far-right-hand man in Quebec, Maxime Bernier, denounced the federal “spending power” in a speech at Toronto’s Albany Club last October, I could almost hear my father’s caustic comments.
“So that tired old song is being sung again,” I can imagine him saying. Then he would sit down at his antiquated typewriter – once dubbed “the most trenchant typewriter in the country” – and pound out a letter to the editor detailing exactly how wrong Bernier is, and why it matters.
I — along with a whole lot of other British Columbians — have been stewing away about the abrupt end to the BC Rail trial, and the decision to let David Basi and Bob Virk completely off the hook for $6 million in legal fees. Politics of the matter aside, what really gets me is the appalling contrast between this largess on the part of the Special Prosecutor and the government's denial of access to justice to so many other British Columbians.
According to Statistics Canada, crime rates have been trending down for over 20 years. This includes the violent crime rate. Yet the Harper government continues to insist that there is an epidemic of crime, and that Canadians should be very afraid of increasing violence — guns, gangs and drugs — the fear factor.
This study analyses the financial and human costs of the Harper government's tough on crime agenda and concludes it is wrong-headed, expensive, and counter-productive. In fact, it will likely lead to more crime and a bigger deficit.
OTTAWA - The Harper governmentís tough on crime agenda will likely increase the incidence of crime and the deficit, says a new report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The report, by CCPA Research Associate Paula Mallea, analyses the financial and human costs of the tough on crime agenda and concludes it is wrong-headed, expensive, and counter-productive.