The Aboriginal Healing Foundation lost its budget less than two years after Stephen Harper's apology for the IRS system, and 134 healing programs are now unable to continue. Some will close today.
Chuck Strahl
Harper's hitlist: The Senate and the Canadian Wheat Board
rabble.ca columnist Murray Dobbin details the harm Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing to the political and social fabric of Canada in a new essay commissioned by The Council of Canadians. This article is an excerpt taken from the essay, the sixth in a 10-part series on Harper's assault on democracy.
Harper's obsession with reforming the Senate
Funding cuts a catastrophe for residential school survivors
The purpose of Canada's Indian Residential Schools (IRS) schools, which separated native children from their families for over 150 years, has been described by many commentators as "killing the Indian in the child. " It is estimated that nearly half of the children originally enlisted in the schools died of malnutrition and disease.
The last remaining residential school closed in 1996.
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was established in 1998, and given a mandate "to encourage and support, through research and funding contributions, community-based Aboriginal-directed healing initiatives which address the legacy of physical and sexual abuse suffered in Canada's IRS System, including intergenerational impacts."
Protesters arrested at MP Chuck Strahl's office
The six women who were arrested while staging a sit-in action at the the Ottawa office of Indian and Northern Affairs minister Chuck Strahl. Photo: Greg Macdougall
Related rabble.ca story:
2.jpg "David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. His 1995 book, A Poke in the Public Eye, explores the relationships among Canadian journalists, public relations people and politicians. He left journalism after the strike at the Calgary Herald in 1999 and 2000 to work as Communications Director of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, which with more than 73,000 members is Alberta’s largest union and Canada’s 10th largest. Alberta Diary focuses on Alberta politics and social issues. Contact: albertadiary @ gmail.com")
Will farmers get it and stop voting Conservative when TPP talks leave the family farm on the ropes?
| November 16, 2011Protesters arrested at MP Chuck Strahl's office
On Monday, two days before the federal government's funding cuts to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation take effect -- six women staged a sit-in outside the Ottawa office of Indian and Northern Affairs minister Chuck Strahl.
The six, all from Montreal, pledged to remain there until a decision was made to restore funding to the AHF, but police removed them within an hour, charging them with trespassing.
A group of supporters from both Montreal and Ottawa gathered outside the building, steps from Parliament Hill with signs, banners and a megaphone, protesting the funding cuts and the hypocrisy of a government that apologizes for the residential schools and then within two years withdraws funding for healing programs.
