The happiest day in my life is now going down as March 17th, 2008. Joan Beatty got everything she deserved in the by election.
I first got to see Joan in action two years ago at the Provincial NDP Convention in Regina. At first glance, I put her in the same class as the other MLA's in attendance. She was treated with respect and admiration for her position.
As the convention proceeded, her true colours came shining through as she broke tradition and became actively involved in the election process for Party Executive. She became very outspoken against the possibility of the President of the Party, not only coming out of labour, but being gay as well. Since then, she has constantly stated that "I have no friends in Labour" and has become an egotistical entity.
Watching her leave the NDP and go Liberal, only validates my thoughts that she doesn't care about anyone but herself. Prostituting herself to the highest bidder only shows that whether she was still an NDP MLA or not, she was only in it for herself and not, as she claims, for the voters who elected her.
Life works funny sometimes, but when the polls closed, and the voters made their voice clear....Joan you got what you so rightfully deserved. What a wonderful day Match 17th is!!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Liberals unable to rally their supporters in N. Saskatchewan
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Conservative government sentences gay man to beatings
As a Canadian and a gay male, today I hang my head in shame to admit I am Canadian. See additional comments at:
Slap upside the HeadSaskapedia
Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy
Montreal Gazette
Last refugee bid refused to gay Malaysian
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 5, 2008 | 7:41 PM ET cbcnews.ca
A Malaysian man who is to be deported Thursday after being refused refugee status is pleading with the federal government to intervene and let him stay in Canada.Kulenthiran Amirthalingan made a last-ditch appeal to Immigration Minister Diane Finley, asking her to stay the March 6 deportation order to his native Malaysia. He fears persecution because he is gay.
Amirthalingan, who lives in Montreal, appeared in Ottawa at a news conference Wednesday along with New Democrat MP Thomas Mulcair to request Finley's intervention.
"I am deported back to Malaysia, and I fear my imprisonment, so I would like to ask Ms. Finley to let me stay in Canada," he said.
The soft-spoken Kulen, as he is known to his friends, says he fears for his life if he is sent back to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he experienced discrimination, was harassed and abused for being gay.
Homosexuality is a crime in Malaysia, and punishable by 20 years in jail or caning.
Section 377 of Malaysian's Penal Code states anal and oral sex are illegal whether it's between men, or heterosexual couples.
The penal code also outlaws any sex that is against the "order of nature," whether it is sex between two men, two women or in a heterosexual relationship.
Amirthalingan moved to Montreal in 2003 and applied for refugee status in Canada on humanitarian grounds, arguing his life was in danger because his homosexuality made him a target of Malaysian police who detained him for five days, and abused him, physically and sexually.
"They were punching me, pushing me down to the floor and putting their leg on me to confess that I am a gay," he told CBC last week.
Being gay in Malaysia is difficult, and he is "a bit afraid for my safety" if he's forced to go back.
"I don't have family support too, because my brothers and sisters are against [me] because I'm gay."
Amirthalingan lost his refugee status case because the judge was not convinced he was gay. He filed for a humanitarian appeal and a pre-removal risk assessment, which were both rejected by the Quebec Immigration Board.
Mulcair made a public plea to Finley on Wednesday after Amirthalingan's supporters contacted his Outremont riding office.
"What is really shocking is that they're threatening to deport Kulen not for something he did but for who he is," he said in French at the Ottawa news conference.
"That's a transgression of Canada's fundamental values, and we're having a hard time understanding the government's attitude, and we want this to transcend all partisan considerations."
Montreal human rights lawyer Julius Grey believes Amirthalingan's case merits the immigration minister's review, because "in Canada it is well-established that homosexuality can be a motive for refugee status."
"It would be contrary to my conscience to send back a homosexual to an openly Muslim country," he told CBC last week. "I would say chances of something terrible happening are so high, that it would be unconscionable to not act."
The Malaysia co-ordinator for Amnesty International Canada, Margaret John, said it's not clear whether Amirthalingan's life is at risk "but certainly his right to freedom of expression is at risk" she said.
"He may be charged with being a homosexual, he may be fined, he may be imprisoned."
Equality: women do better in unionized workplaces
On this International Women's Day I encourage everyone to please check out the Canadian Labour Congress home page, to see exactly how bad the wage gap between women and their male counterparts has actually grown.
According to the facts, it just doesn't pay to be a woman in Canada. It doesn't matter where we live. It doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter how much we or our parents have invested in a good education. At the end of the day, when women go to work, they get paid less than men.
In fact, over the past ten years, young women have done everything they were told to do to get ahead economically young women have put off starting a family so they could earn a post-secondary degree and build a career and now, they are actually worse off. The wage gap between them and their male counterparts has actually grown.
Shocking, isn't it? After more than a generation of equal participation in the workforce and at a point where younger women make up the majority of students at so many of our colleges and universities today, we're still not equal when it comes to the value that's placed on the work that women do in Canada.
The evidence can be found in a new report from the Canadian Labour Congress made public just in time for International Women's Day, March 8th.
According to this report, prepared by the Canadian Labour Congress, women in Canada who worked full-time, full-year jobs in 2005 earned just 70½ cents for every dollar earned by men in full-time, full-year jobs.
SFL marks IWD with campaign launch on wage gap
The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour embarked on a joint campaign today with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) entitled “Equality…Once and For All”. The launch of the campaign is taking place across the country in conjunction with International Women’s Day.
The CLC released a new report on the gendered wage gap in Canada, entitled “Women in the Workforce: Still a Long Way from Equality”. Using the latest workforce statistics, the CLC concludes that the wage gap, where women earn 70.5 cents for every dollar earned by men, is persistent and even worsening for some women.
“One of the most disturbing findings is that for young, university-educated women, the wage gap has actually become worse in recent years,” says SFL Women’s Committee Chair, Shelley Johnson. “We told our daughters that the way to be economically independent was to get an education and what we are finding is that those skills are not being rewarded. Women are now more educated than men, and are putting off having families in order to get that education, yet they are falling behind their male counterparts.”
Some of the reasons the wage gap persists include: occupational segregation; lack of publicly-funded childcare; an employment insurance program that discriminates against part-time workers; concentration of women in low-paying and minimum wage jobs; and the restructuring of women’s work by privatization and contracting out.
“Too many women struggle to make a living. Too many women are working and retiring in poverty. At the same time, we have a federal government who claims that women have equality, but then promptly cancels publicly-funded daycare and women’s programming across the country. It’s a contradiction,” says Johnson.
One encouraging finding is that the wage gap for unionized women is significantly lower. “At the provincial level, we have a government who is about to make it far more difficult for women to join a union and to bargain collectively. The SFL will work hard on this campaign over the coming year to organize women to fight these political realities,” adds Johnson.
The SFL represents approximately 95,000 unionized workers from 37 affiliated unions in
Saskatchewan.
For more information, contact Shelley Johnson at 949-9893 (cel.)
or Cara Banks at 533-3423.
