It’s hard to believe that in 2020 there is still a stigma around menstruation. It is beyond clear that access to menstrual hygiene products and information about periods is a basic human right, not a luxury. As Jasmine Ramze Rezaee, manager of advocacy at YWCA Toronto, told me recently, no one "should go without access to menstrual products because of financial barriers [and] some menstrual products should be fully funded by the government.”
Education
On March 4, 1975, I attended a public forum in connection with a study on the unmet needs of blind Canadians. That night, I jumped feet first into community organizing.
The idea of a Green New Deal—a radical and comprehensive transformation of the economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions while tackling inequality—has been gaining steam as an organizing principle for the environmental and social justice movements. Yet there are many questions that GND advocates have yet to think through or agree on. Like how can we produce enough electricity to rapidly replace all fossil fuels? Will new, green jobs be good, unionized jobs that are accessible in the places where jobs are needed most? Crucially, how will we pay for it all?
Photo by Hugo Morales, Wikimedia Commons
The Monitor starts off 2020—the CCPA's 40th anniversary year—with a direct attack on the Trudeau government's contradictory climate plans and the close connections between public officials and the fossil fuel sector. Will minority status and a rising Green New Deal movement change the government's course, or will it be just more business as usual?
With climate and energy issues dominating much of the political debate, the question of how and what students learn about these issues in our public schools has become an increasingly contentious issue. This is especially the case in Western Canada, where recent comments by conservative politicians and pundits like Alberta Education minister Adriana LaGrange and Danielle Smith try to characterize the public-school curriculum as biased and even outright hostile to the oil and gas industry.
REGINA—With climate and energy issues dominating much of the political debate, the question of how and what students learn about these issues in our public schools has become an increasingly contentious issue. This is especially the case in Western Canada, where recent comments by conservative politicians and pundits like Alberta Education minister Adriana LaGrange and Danielle Smith try to characterize the public-school curriculum as biased and even outright hostile to the oil and gas industry.
First published in the Winnipeg Free Press December 5, 2019
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores were released this week, and once again Manitoba ranked poorly relative to other provinces and the Canadian average. Some will say, “What is wrong with our educational system?” However, the better question is, “why do we allow such very high levels of poverty to persist,” when the statistical evidence is so absolutely clear that there is a causal relationship between poverty and low educational outcomes.
Many Manitobans express concern when international ratings of students’ educational achievements such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) are released.
Are the priorities of the Manitoba government in line with Manitobans’ more broadly? This is the question asked last week by a diverse group of community volunteers, representing teachers, healthcare professionals and those concerned about climate change, poverty and income inequality. They were comparing the vision presented in the recent Speech from the Throne with what they have been hearing in workplaces and communities while working towards the upcoming 2020 Alternative Provincial Budget (APB).