Kerri Neil

[kerriclrneil]

C.B.S. domestic disturbance leads to arrest

C.B.S. domestic disturbance leads to arrest - Newfoundland & Labrador - CBC News                                                                                                                        

A 61-year-old man will make a court appearance in St. John's, following a domestic disturbance in Conception Bay South.

Around 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officers responded to a residence in the town.

Police said the man was arrested for assault with a weapon.

It's not known what type of weapon was used, or if any injuries were sustained in the incident

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cbs-domestic-disturbance-arrest-1.3456783?cmp=rss

[kerriclrneil]

Females in Fests: How St. John’s Spring Line-ups Stack Up

Disappointed with the lack of female artists headlining this year’s biggest festivals, I decided to see how Newfoundland & Labrador compares. On the national stage, the lack of female artists headlining huge events like Coachella and Lollapalooza calls attention to the unfaltering misogyny that permeates the music industry. Compared to 2015’s bigger line-ups (thx Pixable), where Pitchfork’s 30% female artists tops the list, Newfoundland’s spring lineup is pretty female-friendly.

26 acts featuring a female artist 45 acts

With 58% of the 45 bands playing Lawnya Vawyna, it just about doubles the female representation of this year’s biggest festivals.

When we look closer, however, discrepancies emerge. Women dominate indie/folk/pop music or, y’know, the music that features pretty girls in floral dresses and big smiles. Light-hearted and fun is how women are expected to act, and playing acoustic guitar or piano are acceptable lady instruments. I don’t mean to degrade these genres because they are full of talented women, but I can’t help but notice how easily they follow female gender norms.

Heading over to the heavy (punk/rock/metal) and electronic shows, dicks start to dominate the stage.

Musically, these scenes are very different, yet they share a certain masculine bravado. They’re both fast and loud, inciting an adrenaline rush in the crowd that provokes panoramic pushing.

While there may be a lack of support for female artists in these scenes, I’m not totally sure that’s all to blame. I think young women do feel empowered enough to overcome that bullshit and start their own bands. Still, many women aren’t choosing to amp up.

I wonder, instead, if women just aren’t comfortable getting angry yet. Are we intimidated by the idea of being loud? When women raise their voice, they are so often told to “calm down,” that they are being emotional wrecks, has it worked to shut us up?

Maybe I’m way off the mark. Maybe women just don’t like loud music. But looking around at all the women in the crowds, I have trouble believing that. Something is preventing women from buying amps, and it’s not the price.

64 acts with women 105 acts

East Coast Music Week, a festival highlighting bands nominated for the East Coast Music Awards, featured a fabulous 64% of acts that included women. Unfortunately, local media did not do a great job of showing this, prompting the hashtag #eastcoastmensawards, but that’s not really ECM’s fault.

Now the ECMAs have a very different process for choosing musicians, which is basically that you have to apply. A high price-tag and a stack of paperwork prevents many awesome artists from bothering, which means that most of the people playing the festival had the ego to do so.

As most of your favorite artists probably didn’t make it into the ECMA nominations, you might’ve ignored it. Newfoundland’s inferiority complex has gotten rich and has become more of a “fuck you, Canada” complex, resulting in 23 submissions from this province.

Including producers and sound engineers, 71% of music genres had nominated at least one act featuring a female. However, the proportion of acts with females that actually won falls to a pitiful 9/35, or 26%.

Female success was concentrated in feminine genres, like pop and roots/traditional because, again, who doesn’t love a pretty girl with an acoustic guitar? It’s ok to play music if you dress nice and wear make-up for it.

100% of the songwriter nominations were for acts including women, mostly solo artists, acknowledging there were at least enough female applicants to fill an entire genre. Inexplicably, not a single woman was nominated for solo recording of the year. I guess according to the ECMA’s, women can write songs, but they can’t play instruments.

Here, again, women wielding electric guitars were rare. The Loud category had no women, the Rock category had one.

It’s difficult to theorize about female representation in the music scene with only three points of data, but the similarities between them are striking. Feminine female artists are successful when they play feminine, female music; cute, pop beats and flowy skirts are very tasteful to the public’s and the musicians’ palate. Let the boys buy the amps, because it’s ok for them to be angry and loud. Stay within your gender norms, and you too can be Canada’s next rising star. But be sure you make your man a sandwich first because we wouldn’t want to piss anyone off now would we?

http://secreteast.ca/2015/04/females-in-fests-how-st-johns-spring-line-ups-stack-up/

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http://themuse.ca/2015/04/15/the-muse-year-in-review-2014-2015/#comment-15174

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http://themuse.ca/2015/04/15/filling-in-the-gaps-why-we-need-international-students-to-stay-and-why-they-wont/#comment-15176

[kerriclrneil]

http://themuse.ca/2015/03/07/7716/

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http://themuse.ca/2015/02/09/reclaiming-slut/

http://themuse.ca/2015/02/09/more-to-love-understanding-polyamory/

http://themuse.ca/2015/02/05/pointcounterpoint-is-monogamy-an-out-dated-norm/

[kerriclrneil]

http://themuse.ca/2015/01/27/grease-street-feature/

[kerriclrneil]

“Tough on crime” fails Canada

Harper’s approach to crime is tough on human lives              13/01/2014

Despite falling crime rates across the country, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been pushing a “tough on crime” agenda since the last election. This was most poignantly emphasized in his government’s omnibus crime bill, the Safe Streets and Communities Act. This sweet-sounding bill packed a lot of punches: minimum and extended sentences for drug convictions, the potential to charge youth with adult sentences, a shift toward prison sentences over house arrest, and the denial of work visas to people considered vulnerable to crime.

Harsher, longer sentences are the exact opposite of the trend toward rehabilitation occurring in many progressive countries.  Norway, for instance, has rejected the punitive approach to prisons, instead choosing relatively short sentences and institutions that reflect a person’s normal life without bars on windows. Germany uses a similar model, and emphasizes fines over incarceration, as well as re-socialization after prison sentences.

These models take into account the desperate situations that drive people to commit crimes. In Canada, 80 to 90 per cent of prisoners in some institutions are addicts, and up to 40 per cent have mental illness. Many prisoners are homeless or victims of abuse, and a disproportionate number are Aboriginal. Efforts to expand and extend prison sentences take precious funds from programs creating healthier communities and instead spend them on hiring more court prosecutors or prison guards.

Instead of addressing problems in our society, our harsh penal code focuses on punishment and then release offenders blindly, sometimes without even halfway houses to help people readjust to normal society.

Mandatory minimum sentences for harmless substances like marijuana make this situation even worse. They overwhelm courts with trivial cases and flood prisons with small-time offenders who then become disillusioned with a system that oppresses them for crimes generally seen as innocuous. Convicts then have a harder time getting legitimate jobs after their sentences, pushing them further away from law-abiding society and reducing their likelihood of turning to government for help.

We must also consider the costs of prison sentences. On average, it costs $322 a day to feed, house, and guard a prisoner, and more for higher-security prisons. Instead of trying to rehabilitate offenders into our economy as working citizens with skills that could enrich us all, the “tough on crime” approach sucks out tax money with its long sentences. This oppressive agenda discourages convicts from seeking legitimate jobs, preventing them from potentially ever being able to contribute to the country’s wealth.

We can see the problems of over-sentencing here in St. John’s. Last spring, a young man was charged with chasing his father and stepmother down the road with a chainsaw. Diagnosed as bipolar and schizoaffective, he was sentenced to just 3 months in prison.

Once released, he was effectively homeless. His lawyer tried to find him housing with Choices for Youth and the Tommy Sexton Centre, but both were at capacity.

This case epitomizes the problems of a system that punishes instead of rehabilitates. This man clearly required professional help, and yet was released to the streets as a convict, scarcely able to lead a normal life.

These problems don’t have a simple solution; they require us to completely change our perception of the justice system. As the victim of a crime, it is easy to demand punitive action against the perpetrator. However, we must place that perpetrator in the context of bigger social problems.

Shifting our focus to root problems and reworking our entire system to promote rehabilitation and re-socialization would build a fairer, more effective criminal justice system. After all, a prison sentence could be an opportunity for government to help, not harm, members of our society.

[kerriclrneil]

Point/Counterpoint: Non-Gendered Bathrooms

Point                                                                                               28/11/2014

If you visited a University Centre bathroom last week, you may have been confused by the pictures of toilets covering the usual stick man or woman that assigns a gender to the room. Students placed these alternative signs during Trans Week of Awareness and Action, which was promoted on campus by LBGT MUN and the MUN Students’ Union. This do-it-yourself effort to make bathrooms at the university inclusive to all genders was admirable, but quickly halted by Campus Enforcement due to university regulations.

Too often are transgender people made to feel uncomfortable by the simple, universal act of going to the bathroom. They have to deal with shock, outrage, and harassment from others, and a great deal of anxiety in making their choice. Binary gender segregation is so ingrained in our society that we perceive any differences as alien, and often react negatively to gender identification outside what is typical.

But we are making progress: non-gendered bathrooms are growing in popularity across North America, especially at universities and colleges. While some have removed gender designators from stalled bathrooms, others have introduced single-room gender-neutral bathrooms to ease the stress faced by trans people. Such changes have occurred in more than 150 universities across North America, and Philadelphia recently passed a law making a single-room all-gender bathroom mandatory in every new development.

Non-gendered bathrooms must be installed at MUN because the times of binary gender segregation are over. As multifaceted human beings with a variety of strengths and personality qualities, we are not defined by our gender. And the lines of binary gender segregation that divide us exclude the large umbrella of people who see beyond them.

Our perceptions of ourselves are not to be shamed or defined by public scrutiny, but must be accepted as an embracing of human diversity. When we allow our narrow ideas of gender to judge those around us, we close ourselves off from many incredible people and perpetuate the pernicious history of segregation.

Once we accept these necessary improvements in our society, non-gendered bathrooms will be obligatory. The debate will revolve solely around the details of implementation—whether bathrooms should be single-room or stall. While single rooms offer optimum privacy, they are not as economical as stalls. In Philadelphia, they implemented female and male stalls with a third non-gendered single bathroom. This may be the best way forward as we become more comfortable sharing the privacy of a bathroom.

The ideal, however, should be non-gendered bathroom stalls. Anxiety about sharing a bathroom with the other gender is really just a reflection of how deep gender segregation is rooted in our perceptions of the world. The discomfort of women seeing men at a urinal can go both ways, and we may have to phase out urinals because of it, but this is little sacrifice to make in pursuit of a more tolerant society. Stalled bathrooms can offer privacy to everyone, and will be easy to adopt because they are already everywhere.

We must feel safe and secure in our public institutions—our bathrooms should be no exception. We must embrace people of all genders, and those without genders, and remove the lines that separate our society. MUN should play a part in this change and begin adopting non-gendered bathrooms.

http://themuse.ca/2014/11/28/pointcounterpoint-non-gendered-bathrooms/

[kerriclrneil]

Point/Counterpoint: Is Canada under attack?

                                                                                                      15/10/2014 

In recent months, Canada has witnessed violent attacks against its RCMP officers and soldiers on an unprecedented scale. Justin Bourque turned a little town in New Brunswick into a police hunting ground this summer, killing three police officers. A few months later, Martin Couture-Rouleau waits patiently in his car for a uniformed soldier to walk by before running him down. And, most shockingly, Canada’s first attack on parliament by a civilian occurred just weeks ago when Michael Zehaf-Bibeau opened fire on the building, shooting one soldier on his way.

These three men have a lot in common. Reports from their families say they were nice, happy people until something happened in their lives to make them rage against the system. They became angrier, more political, and in many cases turned to Facebook to vent their frustrations. Generally, it seems, they felt excluded from society. Their voices were not being heard, their unstable mental health issues not being treated, they decided to take action into their own hands, and the result was devastating.

Reading through Bourque’s Facebook page, his anger against the state is obvious. His right-wing mindset was radical; he loved guns, hated police, and strongly believed we would be better off without the government. Cloaking himself in camouflage and parading around Moncton wielding firearms was a political statement against a government that did not reflect his views. Yet Justin Bourque is not being called a terrorist. Mentally unstable, yes. A terrorist? No.

Zehaf-Bibeau, on the other hand, was called a terrorist before anyone even knew what had happened. He walked into parliament wearing a scarf around his face and, immediately, everyone may have well screamed “the Islamic State is attacking us!” and Harper vowed Canada will “not be intimidated.” Intimidated by whom? Drug addicts in Quebec who feel excluded from society and who are not being treated for their mental health issues?

Couture-Rouleau and Zehaf-Bibeau were Canadian citizens, both raised in Quebec to middle-class families and were leading fairly boring lives until something happened. Couture-Rouleau’s small business failed; Zehaf-Bibeau became addicted to crack, and was involved in a number of petty crimes. Both men were spiraling into depression and paranoia but weren’t receiving treatment for their issues. Their families remark on these changes within the past two years and yet their mental health issues were not being addressed.

Mental illness affects at least 20 per cent of the population but receives inadequate attention from our health care systems. Instead of taking an opportunity to address this issue, our government decided the attack was terrorism. Why? Because doing so suits its agenda. Because Canada has already committed to fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, what better way to stoke public fear and support for the mission then by claiming that they are fighting us back?

If Canada is to pursue its war of power with the United States in the Middle East, it needs an enemy. Preferably an enemy on its home turf. If Canadians feel threatened, they are far more likely to send more troops and throw more bombs down in an effort to create peace. But the problem is not outside our borders; it is here, in Canada. Our friendly mask is hiding deep-rooted problems in our society that are not being addressed, but scapegoated, to build support for a war that is not about us.

Attacks on Canadian police and soldiers are political statements. They are exclamations by men who feel excluded and hopeless in a society that is not helping them. The problems that created such extremism are within our borders, and we should not be looking outside for solutions.

http://themuse.ca/2014/11/15/point-counterpoint-is-canada-under-attack/

[kerriclrneil]

Prostitution: Legalise it, don’t criticize it

                                                                                                      04/11/2014

Canada’s new prostitution law fails to protect sex workers

Recently, headlines told the horrific story of the gang-rape of a St. John’s sex worker. Despite the RNC’s commitment not to arrest them, sex workers have been unwilling to come forward concerning the matter, preventing an investigation. Fears of gang violence, public scrutiny, and criminal charges have silenced these workers and Canada’s new prostitution laws will do nothing to calm their fears.

Tellingly, it was the Safe Harbour Outreach Program (SHOP) that put out the warning about the gang-rape incident via Twitter. SHOP is a new organization devoted to supporting sex workers in Newfoundland and Labrador, and will hopefully serve as a rallying point for those interested in protecting these womens’ rights. Notably, they have started a Warn Other Workers 24/7 hotline, by which callers can inform sex workers about violent clients. Sex workers, and women generally, feel their reports of sexual assault go ignored and so typically do not turn to the justice system to solve them, resulting in untold violence for those involved.

Currently in Canada, prostitution policy is extremely harmful to sex workers, as they are forced into unsafe environments, subject to frequent physical and sexual abuse, and unable to report abusive incidents for fear of going to jail for solicitation.

In December 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s prostitution laws for putting workers in danger. The government’s response, Bill C-36, has been to adopt the Nordic model of increasing penalties for clients and establishing a fund for those who wish to exit the industry while continuing to prohibit public solicitation. The law will not allow sex workers to set up proper businesses, but will rather force them further into hiding as their clients will be less eager to meet publicly. Bill C-36 will not properly protect the safety of sex workers, but it is terribly close to coming into law.

Street-based sex workers have the highest mortality rates of any group of women in North America. Due to the invisible nature of their jobs, they have been targets for serial killers. The British Columbian pig farmer Robert Pickton’s murder of six women demonstrates the inherent dangers of the profession.

Further, existing prostitution laws have institutionalized a stressed relationship between police and sex workers. This tension has promoted police harassment and brutality toward sex workers, and has created an environment in which victims are unable to seek protection from their persecutors.

Many sex workers, who want to frame prostitution in a labour context in which workers have certain occupational health and safety rights, advocate the legalization and regulation of prostitution. Complete decriminalization is another approach favoured by some sex workers. Supporters of decriminalization don’t want their work disturbed by police and government, which are often too eager to impose rehabilitation on the supposedly immoral men and women involved in the sex trade. They also argue that this way the government does not have to condone prostitution nor act as pimp through taxation and regulation.

Recent conversation on prostitution and the political activism of sex workers have moved discussion of the sex trade away from moral judgement. But moral indignation still dominates the ideology of Canada’s Conservatives, and is a main obstacle to the adoption of more progressive prostitution policy.

Many sex workers participate in the industry by choice, pursuing a job that to them is less exploitative than working minimum wage for eight-hour days. Canada has seen dramatic improvements in human and worker rights in the past century, and it is important to extend these rights to all workers in all industries to create a safer environment for everyone.

[kerriclrneil]

Interview with The Operators

                                                                                                      30/10/2014

Exciting and energetic new band, The Operators, enlivened The Ship last weekend with an electric set. A star cast of performers, Dan Boeckner (Handsome Furs, Wolf Parade), Sam Brown (Divine Fits), and Devojka (solo superstar), came together to create a dance party synth pop band that set our feet on fire and had us begging for more.

The band has been touring North America for the past year, and just released its first album last August, but is attracting major attention and with good reason. When asked why the band played shows before releasing an album, Boeckner is quoted as saying that he wanted to focus on the event of music, on playing loud, sweaty shows up close with the audience—and that is just what happened at The Ship last Saturday.

I was lucky enough to sneak backstage and chat with Devojka about the inspiration for the band and how she got involved. Besides managing the synth board for The Operators, Devojka is a solo artist with a similar synth style, but more relaxed and a little dreamier. A big Buffy fan, Devojka is the tea bag to Boecnker’s hot water, infusing his music with the melodies to make his style pop.

K: When did The Operators begin?

D: The conception of the band began in 2012. That’s when Dan and I began to play music together. And then Sam followed. Sam and Dan had already been playing music and he joined the band shortly after.

K: How did you meet Dan Boeckner?

D: I opened up for him a few times with the Furs and he asked me if I wanted to be part of his new music project.

K: How would you describe the music?

D: That’s really hard for me, but I guess the appeal for me to play this kind of music was I loved the idea of getting people to dance and doing something that was more unifying rather than isolated. When I was younger I liked to listen to music that expressed a catharsis that was more related to how bad I felt, and as I get older I want to dance the bad feelings away. I want music that makes everyone get up and do the mashed potato or the locomotion, so that was the appeal. At the heart of it, it’s dance music.

Check out The Operators website, operatorsmusic.com, to hear their fabulous new album. It’s fun, it’s catchy, and it’s sure to be blaring at your next late night basement dance party.

http://themuse.ca/2014/10/30/interview-with-the-operators/

[kerriclrneil]

Point/Counterpoint: Was our government’s decision to attack ISIL a mistake?

Point                                                                                               18/10/2014

On October 7, Parliament voted in favour of deploying some 600 troops and about 10 fighter jets to join the US airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. While this military contribution is fairly small and comes with a six-month expiry date, I question the need for any Western involvement in the conflict.

Obviously, I want peace in the Middle East and am horrified by the gruesome tales of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters attacking the innocent populations of Iraq and Syria. I don’t know the best way to stop ISIL, but neither does the Canadian government and I am certain that a foreign power pouring bombs down on these territories isn’t the answer.

In fact, the terrorists want us to send in our guns. They know they don’t have the power to fight a major power like the United States, but that if America fights them, it will effectively galvanize the population to join their side. Suddenly, ISIL will be the good guys, protecting the people from foreign leaders who are more interested in protecting Iraq’s oil than protecting its children.

Has history taught us anything? Al-Qaeda numbered in the hundreds before 9/11. They pulled a cheap stunt and we fell right into their trap. We deployed thousands of troops to attack a group we knew nothing about, in a region we hadn’t mapped out, with a language we couldn’t speak. This effectively turned the population against the West and into al-Qaeda’s arms. We may have removed the Taliban and propped up supposedly democratic governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is naive to think that our involvement in these areas didn’t create ISIL.

And we can’t pretend that we’re entering this new war on terror to protect the population.

Inspired by the Arab Spring, Syrians began fighting back against the Assad regime back in 2011. Assad’s response has been ferocious and the death toll has surpassed 100,000 while millions have fled their homes and sought refuge in neighbouring countries. Remember when the US said it was going to invade if Assad used chemical weapons, and that happened in 2013? If the US were so keen on protecting the people of the Middle East, wouldn’t they be in Syria by now?

Furthermore, ISIL has been rampaging across Syria and Iraq all summer. It seems like more than a coincidence that the US decided to get involved just as ISIL was nearing the Kurdish oil capitol of Irbil, don’t you think?

The West has been invading and manipulating the Middle East ever since they discovered massive oil reserves. This is just another chapter in a long history of colonial dominance. If left alone, violent governments will eventually lose support of the population and burn out. If we invade, it will only be to protect our own interests, further radicalizing the population and adding fuel to ISIL’s fire.

http://themuse.ca/2014/10/18/pointcounterpoint-was-our-governments-decision-to-attack-isil-a-mistake/

[kerriclrneil]

Point/Counterpoint: Should the minimum wage be higher? Should it even exist it all?

Point                                                                                               06/10/2014

The federal New Democratic Party recently launched a new policy to reinstate the federal minimum wage at $15 an hour in an attempt to create a living wage for Canadians. This policy would only affect federally regulated sectors—transportation, broadcasting, banks, and mines—but would put substantial pressure on provinces to follow suit. This is the sort of policy Canada needs: one that focuses on building a social economy in which people of all backgrounds can thrive.

The federal minimum wage was removed in 1996 by the Liberal government and currently, provincial minimum wages range from $10 to $11 an hour across the country. Currently in NL, our minimum wage is a lowly $10 an hour; our province’s Progressive Conservative government plans to increase it to $10.50 an hour by October 2015. Working full-time on minimum wage in this province brings one just above the poverty line. If you are a single mom, or a student who can only work part-time, you can barely make ends meet. Forget about saving for the future.

Statistics Canada recently reported that 47 per cent of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque, spiralling into debt to pay for necessities. This is not good enough for Canadians. Our huge resources sector is supposed to be reaping us huge rewards, but instead companies are stockpiling their money, lobbying hard so that not an extra dime is taxed. Income inequality is growing in this country, and in this province, and our response is to cut taxes so that the rich can get richer while the poor are just surviving.

There are nearly a million people in this country working on minimum wage. If we raised this to a living wage, we would create a healthier economy that emphasises workers’ wellbeing rather than their employers’. A living wage releases people from financial stress and promotes social inclusion. It allows them to have families, to save money for the future, and to develop healthier lives by eating well or having time to exercise. It allows people to spend, and to travel, so that they may spend across the country. Consumers are the driving force behind our economy. If we pay people at the bottom more, they will buy more. If they can hardly afford the necessities, they certainly can’t afford the consumption necessary to keep our businesses alive, let alone grow.

One may argue that increasing wages hurts business, but not having customers hurts businesses more. Paying workers more has also been shown to increase their productivity, thereby contributing to increased profits for employers. It is also linked with decreased absenteeism and training, as people feel more valued in their jobs and are more willing to stay there.

A living wage is not a new idea in Canada either. It has been pursued by municipalities across the country, from Kamloops, BC in 2010 to Hamilton, ON just last March. Employers and employees are beginning to understand that a fair wage brings prosperity to their regions, and attracts new people to move there, further increasing their economic growth.

In the 1970s Canada was making impressive inroads in the growth of a social economy with policies such as universal healthcare and equalization that focused on increasing the wellbeing of all Canadians. Very little has been done to enrich Canadians since. We need more policies that focus on the bottom 20 per cent instead of always attempting to keep the rich, rich.

http://themuse.ca/2014/10/06/pointcounterpoint-should-the-minimum-wage-be-higher-should-it-even-exist-it-all/

[kerriclrneil]

Economist speaks on homelessness in Calgary

                                                                                                      07/10/2014

Memorial University recently played host to Ron Kneebone, a visiting professor from the University of Calgary who presented his work on homelessness in Calgary.

According to the Calgary Homeless Foundation, while Calgary is one of the richest cities in Canada, it also holds one of the highest rates of homelessness. An average of 2,000 people stay in shelters every night, while another 50-500 ‘rough sleepers’ stay on the streets.

In his presentation, Kneebone highlighted how problems of homelessness are interrelated with domestic violence, food insecurity, income support measures, and legal/police/by-law enforcement, which makes it at a complex issue to solve. He further claims that homelessness is a sign of a broken social safety net and can only be solved by changing the policies of governments and social agencies.

Calgary is currently in year 6 of a 10-year plan that has done little to mitigate the problem but has taken steps towards understanding it.

Breaking away from a career studying government finances, Kneebone says he became involved with the Calgary Homeless Foundation and learned that there was a complete lack of data on the subject. While the government knew how many people were checking into shelters each day, nobody was collecting data on who these people were, how long they stayed at the shelters, and how many times they returned. The government knew how many shelter beds were being used, but the data hadn’t been properly compiled to compare shelter use on different days of the week, different months of the year, or aggregate trends over time.

Once Kneebone saw these holes in the data, he began a project to fill the gaps and learned some interesting information. According to his data, homelessness in Calgary is positively correlated with the business cycle, so when the labour market is booming, the number of people in shelters rise as more people move to Calgary looking for work.

Related to this is the lack of affordable housing in Calgary. The city has been rezoning spaces and gentrifying areas, which has caused a dramatic decrease in the number of single room occupancy hotels and a complete removal of trailer parks. This trend has coincided with the rise in the use of shelters since the 1990s.

The issue of homelessness, however, is not as prevalent in Edmonton. Despite being a near-by city of similar wealth and size, Edmonton has half the number of homeless people but many more rental accommodations.

As a solution, Kneebone’s suggests municipality must rezone and create more areas with affordable renting accommodation by subsidizing the private sector. Echoing Brendon O’Flaherty, Kneebone also suggested incentivizing housing; giving people money for having a house and thereby minimizing behaviour that leads people to lose their homes.

One solution proposed was a guaranteed annual income, topping up everyone’s income so that they meet a certain living standard, with which they can do as they please. This was done in Dauphin, Manitoba between 1974 and 1979 to reported success.

 http://themuse.ca/2014/10/07/economist-speaks-on-homelessness-in-calgary/

http://homelesshub.ca/resource/homelessness-alberta-demand-spaces-alberta%E2%80%99s-homeless-shelters

[kerriclrneil]

Taking back the night: a participant’s experience

                                                                                                       05/10/2014

Take Back the Night, the annual St. John’s march protesting violence against women, took place on Friday, September 21. Hundreds gathered at Bannerman Park at 7:00 pm to prepare for the evening. Armed with signs and noisemakers, we stood together as the NL Sexual Assault Crisis and Prevention Centre (NLSACPC) inspired us for the march ahead.

The ever-energetic Renee Sharpe, organizer of Wen-Do Self Defense, empowered us with stories of women who fought back against attackers and won. She recounted a story of an old lady who yelled threats at her attacker, effectively scaring him away, and of a six-year old who, when grabbed by a man, knew how to stomp on his foot and break his bones. Sharpe invigorated us as she taught a simple self-defense maneuver, yelling “Who’s in charge of my body?” We responded, “I am,” collectively thrusting our fists through the air.  Music by the Eastern Owl drum circle from the St. John’s Native Friendship Centre gave us the beat to line up and begin our march.

We paraded along Military Road, blocking traffic and yelling chants such as, “Wherever we go, however we dress, no means no and yes means yes!” We had to be loud; we needed to be heard. Women’s problems are so often shushed and this was our chance to scream.

We stopped at the Supreme Court on Water Street to note the injustices against women occurring in our province. Social worker Jennifer Mercer gave a fairly soft-spoken speech about the disestablishment of the Family Violence Intervention Court, which dealt with domestic violence in the city. Each person then ascended the steps of the Supreme Court to mark an ‘X’ in white chalk, representing the women who had been failed by the justice system.

Afterwards, we headed off to City Hall, chanting all along the way. The steps were alight with 346 candles, each representing a visit to the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program at St. Clare’s since 2005. We each held a candle as the executive director of the NL Sexual Assault Crisis and Prevention Centre, Nicole Kieley, delivered opening remarks and introduced the speakers.

Gemma Hickey, a prominent local activist and executive director of For the Love of Learning, then gave a speech. Hickey’s speech combined raw honesty and light-hearted humour as she led us through her life story. She emphasized the importance of respecting all sorts of women, and she urged that, instead of dividing ourselves, we must unify and learn from each other so that women together may become a force to be reckoned with.

Each of us dispersed that night feeling newly empowered to stand up for our rights and spread the word of injustices against women everywhere. We learned that women do not deserve to feel threatened on the streets, hurt by our loved ones, or cat-called by strangers. We learned that we must come together to make our voices heard, that together we are strong, and that together we can bring about change.

http://themuse.ca/2014/10/05/taking-back-the-night-a-participants-experience/

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Raising the minimum wage: Citizens express anguish over working poverty

                                                                                                     07/09/2014  

Last Tuesday, the provincial New Democratic Party held a town hall to discuss a proposal likely to be part of their policy platform in 2015: a proposal to raise the minimum wage.

In 2010, the Progressive Conservative (PC) government raised minimum wage to $10 per hour, making it the highest in Canada. Four years later, we now rank tenth in the country, sharing the bottom ranks with the other Maritime provinces.

The New Democrats (NDP), however, say that this is not enough in face of rising food, gas, and housing costs. Meanwhile, their federal counterparts have been discussing implementing a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour.

Following the recommendations of a 2011 government committee that investigated minimum wage in this province, the provincial NDP want minimum wage increased to about $11 per hour and to index it annually to inflation as per the Consumer Price Index (CPI). They say this will help restore the buying power of those living on minimum wage and that annual adjustments will ensure that these consumers can hold onto their purchasing power. When the NDP put this private member’s motion forward in the House of Assembly in 2012, it was defeated on the votes of PC and Liberal party members.

The NDP have recently reignited the issue and have gone province-wide petitioning for the adoption of the committee’s recommendations. On Tuesday night the party held a town hall to hear the public’s opinions on the issue.

A crowd of about 60 gathered in St. Teresa’s Parish Hall to tell their stories and voice their concerns. The gathering heard from a single mother who is forced to live off of social assistance due to the price of childcare; a young man who works 60 hours per week in order to make end’s meet; and a senior citizen whose disability payments had been cut for making a dollar more than the minimum wage.

Though the rejection of the proposed raise in 2012 shows the parties do not see eye to eye on the issue, it is less controversial among young party members at Memorial University.

Ryan Steeves, President of the MUN Liberals, says that the party sees adequate pay of minimum wage workers as an important issue in our economy.

“I know that this is a huge concern to students where we have to work at whatever job we can get – often at minimum wage – and try to afford our tuition,” he said. “One of the main concerns of the Liberal party is to make sure that people can live on their wages and to make sure that they have a higher quality of life.”

Chris Russell, PC MUN’s Director of Membership, said that he holds a similar opinion of raising the minimum wage and that it should meet the cost of living.

“I think it needs to be done to keep up with inflation and I think it’s about time that we raised it,” he said. “I was making minimum wage at 10 bucks an hour when I was 17 years old and that was almost five years ago now.”

The PCs are planning increases this year and next. Minimum wage will rise by $0.25 this October and again in October 2015. For those working full-time at minimum wage, that $0.50 raise amounts to an extra $20 per week.

This town hall was recorded by Rogers TV and will be airing in the next few weeks.

http://themuse.ca/2014/09/17/raising-the-minimum-wage-citizens-express-anguish-over-working-poverty/