Hate crimes in Canada increased 47 percent in 2017, primarily targeting Muslims, Jews and black people, according to figures released by the country’s statistical agency on Thursday.
The biggest increase was in crimes targeting Muslims, Statistics Canada reported, in a year that saw a deadly mass shooting in a Quebec mosque, followed by a government motion to study Islamophobia that itself sparked anti-Muslim sentiment.
TORONTO — Robin Edger, Ontario director at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to the release of the Government of Ontario’s climate plan:
“Today, the Ontario government released a climate plan that lacks a clear path to reduce our carbon pollution and ensure a clean, healthy, and safe environment. The plan weakens Ontario’s carbon pollution reduction targets by 27 per cent.
“Ontarians know we have a responsibility to each other and our children to ensure clean air and a healthy environment. The government’s climate plan does not meet this responsibility.
“This plan reverses years of progress and erases popular programs that led to economic growth and cleaner air for Ontarians. This reversal in direction is costing Ontarians job growth in clean, innovative industries and putting the environment at risk.
“A credible climate plan would, at minimum, present effective solutions to reduce carbon pollution from transportation, industry, and homes and buildings. A credible plan would include solutions to help make it more affordable for people to retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient, and make the transition to electric vehicles more affordable. The plan released today contains mainly aspirational statements and plans to make plans, without seriously demonstrating how the government will lead Ontario to a low-carbon economy.
“However, we are encouraged to see the government’s intention to parallel federal changes to the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance, which will make technology investments in clean energy generation and energy conservation equipment more attractive.
“We will be assessing the government’s announced plan to regulate industrial carbon pollution and their proposed flexibility mechanisms such as compliance payments. We are pleased to see the government acknowledge that pollution pricing is an effective tool for reducing carbon pollution. However, we are concerned the province is creating investment uncertainty through this separate standard meant to replace the federal government’s standard.
“As the recent United Nations IPCC report made clear, we need urgent action to limit climate change and head off its more extreme impacts. Ontario is already experiencing extreme climate events, from the polar vortex the last few winters, to the record-setting wildfires of this past summer, to the flooding in Toronto, Ottawa, and Windsor. We do not have the luxury of stalling on climate action for the next four years.”
Quick facts
-In 2016, Ontario’s carbon pollution was 23 per cent below its historic peak in 2000, on track with emissions reduction targets.
-Ontario is warming faster than the global average; the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998.
-In 2017, the clean tech sector in Ontario included 5,000 companies with 130,000 employees and $19.8 billion in annual revenue.
The federal government and the provinces must examine “monstrous” allegations of modern-day forced sterilizations of Indigenous women, NDP reconciliation critic Romeo Saganash said Monday before he pressed for answers in the House of Commons.
Coerced sterilization clearly breaches human-rights standards that Canada must fight to uphold, Saganash in an interview Monday, and said that authorities should very carefully read Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN in 1948.
That international agreement says that “genocide” includes any acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, such as by “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
Canadians should not tolerate allegations of forced sterilization in their country, Saganash said, and Ottawa must address the issue as victims share their stories.
RALLY: Community Not Cops! Divest from Police, Invest in People Saturday, November 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm Surrey City Hall, 13450 104 Ave
This event is taking place in Surrey on the unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Qayqayt, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Semiahmoo, Tsleil-Waututh, Tsawwassen, and Musqueam Nations.
We’re told the police exist to keep our communities safe, but this story falls apart when we consider the day-to-day activities of police officers. They surveil and harass homeless people, arresting them for survival activities like panhandling. They enforce the catastrophic war on drugs, responsible for countless deaths. And they terrorize racialized and Indigenous communities, profiling and brutalizing young people of colour with impunity.
Crime rates are falling in Surrey and across the country, but police budgets continue to expand. The police and their supporters play on Surrey residents’ fears of gang violence to justify funding increases. But the City of Surrey is already home to the largest RCMP detachment in the country, and the proposed municipal police force will be even bigger. This overwhelming police presence does nothing to address the systemic roots of gang involvement: poverty, racism, and drug prohibition. Instead, the cops profile and criminalize youth of colour, making the situation worse.
Massive funding for police comes at the expense of social programs and resources, like community centres and youth programs, which could actually address some of the root causes of violence in our communities. By divesting from the police, we can invest in real community solutions. It is up to us to decide what form those solutions take.
ANTI-POLICE POWER SURREY is new organization that formed to push back against the relentless expansion of police power and call for the City of Surrey to divest from the police and invest in the people. Anti-Police Power Surrey is supported by Alliance Against Displacement.
Vahan Kololian is chairman of the The Mosaic Institute.
Most Canadians are shocked to hear that Canada has the fourth highest level of gun violence amongst OECD nations. A revealing comparison is with Japan, which has an absolute ban on firearms. Japan reports an average of 0.005 firearm homicides per 100,000 people per year. Canada, by the same measure, averages 0.48, nearly 100 times that of Japan. The United States, at 3.65, is at almost 730 times the Japanese statistic.
The carnage of shootings in Toronto, Fredericton, Quebec City and Montreal’s Ahuntsic-Cartierville are painful examples of gun violence’s tragic effects. In the wake of these incidents, the common reaction is “thoughts and prayers.” Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. Our objective must be to eradicate gun violence by addressing its primary cause: the ease of access to guns. We must criminalize possession of all firearms in Canada.
This is a justifiably pragmatic policy recommendation, not an overreaction. There are some clear exceptions: licensed hunters, gun clubs, sports shooters and law enforcement. Barring these, there is absolutely no justifiable reason for an individual to be carrying a firearm.
Four teenage Jewish boys wearing religious attire were assaulted and robbed in a hate crime Sunday evening, say police.
The 17-year-old boys were walking in Toronto’s north end wearing kippahs when they passed another group of nine people in their early teens, who made derogatory comments about their religion, according to police. The two groups were unknown to one another.
The group then assaulted two of the boys, “punching and kicking them” and stole a pair of sunglasses from one of the victims, reported police who arrived at the scene at 8 p.m. Officers arrested a 17-year-old whose identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The Jewish community is “deeply disturbed to learn of this vile assault,” said Noah Shack, GTA vice president of The Centre of Israel and Jewish Affairs in a statement. “Jewish Canadians should never fear wearing their kippah in public.”
In the bloodshed and chaos that is the battlefields of the First World War, hundreds of thousands of young Canadian men sign up to fight for their country overseas — but there’s one who sticks out from the crowd. His bravery and fearlessness are legendary. His fellow soldiers call him Peggy.
Queer Fiction Writer 