Dearborn, Michigan, elects its first Arab American mayor

A Michigan city considered to be the center of Arab America has finally elected its first Arab-American mayor.

© Courtesy Jaafar Issa Abdullah Hammoud, the son of Lebanese immigrants, was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan.

By Alaa Elassar, CNN 4 hrs ago

Abdullah Hammoud, the son of Lebanese immigrants, was born and raised in Dearborn, where he was elected mayor on Tuesday. With the victory, he also becomes the city's first Muslim mayor.

Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab-American communities in the United States. Dearborn's population is about 42% Arab, according to Census figures. But more recent surveys suggest the city could be more than half Arab.

Despite the city's large Arab community, it has never been led by an Arab- or Muslim-American.

"It's just a humbling experience. It's humbling that in this town, people are willing to vote for someone based on the direction in which they lead, not in the direction in which they pray," Hammoud, 31, told CNN. "It's humbling because it shows that someone like me, who has a name like Abdullah Hussein Hammoud, doesn't have to change or shy away from their identity to achieve success."

Hammoud is serving his third term as state representative for Michigan's 15th District, which includes Dearborn. He was first elected in 2016 and has since been re-elected twice.

He will take office as mayor in January.

"It is a huge deal for the Arab community in Michigan and nationwide," Sally Howell, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, told CNN. "The symbolic capital of Arab America, Dearborn, Michigan, finally has an Arab American mayor to speak on behalf of this unique population. Representation matters."

Hammoud says he is ready to get to work and immediately begin tackling issues that affect his city, including climate change.

"There's a clock on the wall, and there's the question of when is the next heavy rain that's going to set in that's going to lead into the next catastrophic flooding, similar to what we experienced in the past summer when nearly 20,000 homes experienced some type of flooding," Hammoud said.

"We have to immediately start adjusting the climate crisis by putting forth bold and innovative proposals," he said.

Hammoud will also work to reduce taxes and assist residents in combating the health and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, according to his campaign website.

Hammoud says he hopes his win sends a message to Dearborn's youth -- especially those who are targeted because of their differences -- that nothing is out of reach.

"Never shy away from who you are," he said. "Be proud of your name, be comfortable in your identity, because it'll take you places if you work hard, you're passionate and you inspire people."

'Her heart was beating too' - Poles protest against strict abortion law

WARSAW (Reuters) - Thousands of people gathered in cities across Poland on Saturday to protest against strict abortion laws after a pregnant woman's death reignited public debate on the issue in one of Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries.

© Reuters/DAWID ZUCHOWICZ People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Warsaw

A ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that abortion on the grounds of foetal defects contravened the constitution came into effect in January, triggering a near total ban on pregnancy terminations and widespread protests.

© Reuters/DAWID ZUCHOWICZ People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Warsaw

People holding candles and carrying banners saying 'not one more' and 'indifference is complicity', marched through dozens of towns and cities on Saturday, according to organisers, including Pszczyna, southern Poland, where the woman lived.

Activists say the death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy whose family said died of septic shock, was a result of the ruling.

Izabela went to hospital in Pszczyna in September after her waters broke, her family said. Scans had previously shown numerous defects in the foetus. But doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy while the foetus still had a heartbeat.

© Reuters/MARCIN STEPIEN People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Lodz

When a scan showed the foetus was dead, doctors decided to perform a Caesarean. The family's lawyer, Jolanta Budzowska, said Izabela's heart stopped on the way to the operating theatre and she died despite efforts to resuscitate her

.

© Reuters/KRZYSZTOF CWIK People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Wroclaw

'Her heart was beating too' read slogans on banners and in information shared by protest organisers.

"...the anti-abortion law in Poland kills Polish women. It is cruel, it is terrifying," a woman attending a protest in Pszczyna said in a comment aired by a private broadcaster TVN24.

"It is inhuman and I hope that this situation will contribute in some way, so that Polish women will not have to die," she added.

On Saturday, the news website Onet.pl published an interview with a husband of another woman who he claimed died in June in similar circumstances.

The government says the court ruling was not to blame for Izabela's death, rather an error by doctors. Poland's health minister Adam Niedzielski pledged to issue guidelines to make it clear when terminations were legal.

"I asked the National Consultant for Gynecology and Obstetrics to issue such guidelines...that will be unambiguous about the fact that the safety of a woman, in such a case as happened, is a reason to terminate the pregnancy," he told private radio RMF FM.

© Reuters/DAWID ZUCHOWICZ

 People protest after a death of Izabela, a 30-year-old woman in the 22nd week of pregnancy with activists saying she could still be alive if the abortion law wouldn't be so strict in Warsaw

Poland's president proposed changing the law last year to make abortions possible in cases where the foetus was not viable. In September a draft bill introducing a total ban on abortion was submitted to parliament by a group of citizens.

"...let's finally change the law that kills women, deprives families of mothers, wives and sisters," Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bak, a left-wing lawmaker, was quoted as saying ahead of protests by news agency PAP.

(Reporting by Anna Koper; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Poles protest mother's death blamed on abortion law




Poles protest mother's death blamed on abortion law'Not one more,

' shouted thousands of demonstrators in the capital Warsaw (AFP/Wojtek Radwanski)

Bernard OSSER
Sat, November 6, 2021, 

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in Warsaw and dozens of other Polish cities to denounce a nine-month-old abortion law blamed for claiming the life of a pregnant mother, organisers said.

The 30-year-old woman died of septicaemia in a Polish hospital after her 22-month-old foetus died in her womb, the family's lawyer Jolanta Budzowska tweeted.

She was, she added, the first victim of the near-total ban on abortion.

Izabela, married for 10 years and a mother of a nine-year-old child, agonisingly described her worsening condition in text messages made public since her death in late September.

"Not one more," shouted thousands of demonstrators in the capital Warsaw who protested outside the Constitutional Court and the health ministry.

"I am here to make sure that no woman's life is put at risk any more," Ewa Pietrzyk, a 40-year-old Warsaw resident, told AFP as she held a photo of Izabela. "The current legislation is killing women."

Women's rights groups said they organised similar demonstrations in around 70 other Polish towns and cities.

Izabela's family issued a statement saying doctors at the hospital in the southern town of Pszczyna "took a wait-and-see attitude," which it attributed to "the rules in effect limiting the possibility of a legal abortion".

The pregnant mother recalled the limbo she was in with a baby she said weighed 485 grammes, just over a one pound, according to text messages that were made public.

"For now, thanks to the law on abortion, I must remain lying down," she said.

- 'It's dreadful' -

"And there's nothing they can do. They will wait until (the baby) dies or until something starts, and if not, I can, great, expect septicaemia," Izabela wrote in a text to her mother.

"My fever is increasing. I hope that I don't have septicaemia, otherwise I will not make it," the pregnant mother said.

"It's dreadful. And I have to wait," she said.

According to the nationalist government running the country, the woman's death had nothing to do with the new law.

Two doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna were suspended after Izabela's death, and the town's prosecutors have launched an inquiry.

Poland's Constitutional Court last year sided with the Catholic country's populist right-wing government to rule that terminations over foetal defects were unconstitutional.

This resulted in a further tightening of already heavy restrictions on abortions, which came into effect in late January.

Rights group say that several thousand women have sought their help to seek abortions, more often that not abroad.

In October, a coalition of 14 rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said that as a result of the court ruling "women, girls, and all pregnant people have faced extreme barriers to accessing legal abortions".

The NGOs called on the European Commission to immediately implement a mechanism that could see Poland denied funds from Brussels for not respecting "EU values".

The Constitutional Court, which the EU says has had its independence stripped away, is currently at the centre of a separate row with Brussels after a controversial ruling earlier this month against the supremacy of the bloc's laws.

bo/lc/jj

50 years after the Attica prison riot, a new documentary takes viewers inside 'the yard'

Patrice Gaines 

The images are haunting: In black and white film and photographs, naked men, most of them Black, some of them bloodied, all stand in a prison yard with their hands on their heads as white uniformed guards point weapons at them.

© Provided by NBC News

Moments like this fill the new documentary “Attica,” by MacArthur Fellow and Emmy-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson. The film, premiering Saturday on Showtime, tells the story of the bloodiest prison rebellion in U.S. history, five decades after it happened. The protest’s leaders insisted on bringing journalists and filmmakers into “the yard,” meaning that 50 years later Nelson’s documentary includes actual footage from the rebellion and the state’s brutal retaking of the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York in 1971.

“We’ve only screened the film four times, and every time the audience sits in stunned silence,” Nelson said. “It’s not a film you can applaud for. I think the best description of the film for me was from someone who said that it was not a film, that it was an experience.”

This is exactly the kind of reaction co-director and producer Traci A. Curry — who tracked down 16 mm film, photos and survivors — had hoped for.

“I don’t think you should be able to walk away without knowing the wanton disregard that the state had for these human beings,” Curry said.

Curry likened the experience of the prisoners with the experience of watching the documentary: “They know at some point it will end probably in violence, but even they think maybe, just maybe this will work out.”

Because it has been 50 years since the Attica rebellion, there are generations who have never heard about the uprising, aside from a character in the movie “Dog Day Afternoon” chanting “Attica! Attica!” and all the imitations that have followed

.

© Showtime Image: A still from

“I showed it to my nephew and his girlfriend, and they said, ‘I thought they were going to win,’” Nelson said.

Prisoners were angry and frustrated over living conditions. They were fed subpar food and subjected to poor sanitation, like being issued one roll of toilet paper per month. They endured beatings, racial epithets and barbaric medical treatment. Regular punishment included being stripped naked and being kept in a cell for days. Muslims were denied the right to worship. In the film, men describe “goon squads” of guards who beat inmates and dragged them away in the middle of the night.

But eventually, the rising tensions turned into a five-day siege involving nearly 1,300 inmates and more than 30 hostages in September 1971.

Once inmates took control of the prison, they set up camp in the area called “the yard.” Film footage shows Vietnam veterans teaching inmates how to make tents and a latrine. An inmate who was a nurse erected a medical station.

On the first day of the siege, guard William Quinn, one of the hostages, was severely beaten. Some inmates put Quinn on a stretcher and called for an ambulance.

© Showtime Image: A still from

James Asbury, who was 20 years old and serving five months in the prison on a parole violation, is interviewed throughout the film. He told NBC News he has not been able to watch the entire documentary.

“I have looked at it until I can’t look anymore,” Asbury said. “I suffer from PTSD. I’ll never forget it, but I try to put it to rest. There are so many things that trigger memories of the abuse.”

Today, he lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his wife of 27 years, their daughter and three grandchildren. Health issues forced him to retire from his work at a drug treatment center. He’s had a kidney transplant and has diabetes.

“Some days the stress from that experience makes me want to just lay down,” he said.

Yet, Asbury revisited the trauma of Attica for a one purpose.

“I was willing to do anything to keep hope alive that prison reform will become a reality in my lifetime,” he said

.

© Showtime Former inmate James Asbury said he suffers from PTSD after the siege at Attica. (Showtime)

In addition to the stories of the inmates, the filmmakers show the lives of the people who worked at Attica through photos and interviews with their families. Co-producer Curry said she spent months tracking down people — including former inmates, the relatives of guards and former Attica guards — and worked to build relationships of trust with them.

Still, former corrections officers she contacted declined to participate in the project. The prison was a major employer in the area, and it employed generations of families. All the guards were white; the majority of the prisoners were Black and Latino.

“It was my intention to have people touched by every part of this story,” Curry said.

The inmates gave their demands to a group of hand-picked outsiders who formed the observers committee and became mediators.

But then corrections officer William Quinn died. Outside the prison, townspeople were gathering with worried families of hostages. They demanded an end to the siege. Meanwhile, the committee members pleaded with Gov. Nelson D. Rockefeller to come to the prison, if only to approve of the negotiations.

Rockefeller refused.

On Day 4, committee members, believing any hope of negotiating a peaceful resolution had ended, asked the inmates to surrender. They refused without a promise of amnesty for all those involved in the protest.

Negotiators left, distraught. Clarence Jones, then the editor and part-owner of the New York Amsterdam News, recalled in the film that inmates handed him notes with names and phone numbers of people to call in case they died.

On the fifth day, inmates described a green gas overwhelming them and limiting their vision. They were told to put their hands in the air.

Then pop, pop, pop, pop, pop — unrelenting gunfire started.

John Johnson, a Black reporter who had been chosen as an observer inside by inmates, recalled being outside the facility and having two guards running toward him shouting a racial slur and pointing guns. Johnson shouted back, “Don’t shoot!”

© Showtime Image: Reporter John Johnson (Showtime)

Asbury said the inmates were punished as soon as the gunfire ceased.

“We were forced to run a gauntlet with National Guards and prison guards standing on each side with billy clubs, pickaxes, pipes and all kinds of long sticks,” Asbury told NBC News. “It looked like 30 to 40 of them lined up down the hallway with glass on the floor from windows. We were barefoot and naked. If you fell, they beat you until you could get up or until you were unconscious, and they picked you up and dragged you to the cell.”

In total, 43 people died during the siege: 32 prisoners and 11 hostages, including Quinn. The other 10 hostages who died were killed as the state police retook the prison under Rockefeller's orders. Among the slain prisoners was L.D. Barkley, 21, who famously declared to the media, "We are men!"

Eventually the state of New York settled lawsuits and awarded the surviving hostages and the families of the people killed $12 million. It gave the same amount to 502 surviving prisoners who were victims of violence.

“I was almost beaten to death,” Asbury said. “But they said the extent of my injuries were not that bad.”

He received $6,000.

ITS OK TO DRIVE TO KILL DEMOCRATS

Republicans in 15 states look to 'Hit and Kill' laws to defend those who drive into protests

Shari Kulha 

Over the past few years, with the Trump presidency and the increase in disruptive protests, a small movement that began in 2017 has been gaining strength in Republican states. They either have passed or are looking to pass laws that give drivers who hit someone in a crowd a certain amount of immunity, on the premise that a driver is but one person in a sea of people whose emotions may be heightened enough to make them unpredictable — putting the driver, not the crowd, at risk.

© Provided by National Post A man tries to drive through the crowd during a June protest in Seattle against racial inequality after the death of George Floyd.

After a summer of nationwide racial injustice protests, Republicans in 11 states moved to introduce a flurry of “hit and kill” bills in hopes of cracking down on protesters in the leadup to and in the immediate aftermath of the contentious 2020 presidential election.

Iowa, Oklahoma and Florida so far have passed laws this year that say if a driver unintentionally hits protesters with their vehicle, they may not be prosecuted, the Boston Globe outlines in a special report on the issue.

Most of those proposals followed the many demonstrations following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year. But it was a personal incident that prompted the governor of Iowa — the next state south — to act.

Kim Reynolds had just passed the More Perfect Union Act, aimed at protecting citizens from most chokeholds and from police misconduct.
Former police officer Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22-1/2 years for George Floyd murder
St. Louis couple who aimed guns at anti-racism protesters pardoned by Missouri governor

But then, about three weeks after the Floyd death, and leaving an engagement north of Des Moines, Reynolds was being driven out through a crowd of Des Moines Black Liberation Movement protesters, who had followed her there. They had waited on the main road on to which her SUV would emerge. One protester stood right in her lane.

“I’m going to stand here and the car’s going to stop and we’re all going to yell and make Kim Reynolds hear us and maybe she’ll roll down her window,” Jaylen Cavil, then 23, told the Boston Globe that he had thought at the time.

Reynolds’ driver inched along, and struck Cavil as he apparently walked in front of the SUV. Cavil turned at the last second and the vehicle just bumped his hip, stopping only when state police stepped in. Cavil was uninjured but his sense of right and wrong was damaged.

“He could have stopped. He could have turned,” Cavil said of the driver. “He just kept going straight.”

© MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds: As long as they were not acting with reckless or wilful misconduct, drivers were granted immunity from lawsuits. SHE IS GIVING THE ALT RIGHT WHITE POWER HAND SIGN AKA THE CHEF BOYARDEE

This was the fifth such protest incident in Iowa since the George Floyd killing. It prompted a twist in Governor Reynolds’s stance. The Republican-controlled state legislature wrote up, in 24 hours, and unanimously pushed out, a new police-supportive bill called the Back the Blue Act.

Reynolds told a crowd assembled for the official announcement of the new legislation that for “the thousands of Iowans who have taken to the streets calling for reforms to address inequities faced by people of colour in our state, I want you to know this is not the end of our work. It is just the beginning.” Few of the protesters in the crowd would have guessed that that “work” would in fact work against them.

As long as they exercised “due care” and were not acting with “reckless or wilful misconduct,” drivers were now granted immunity from lawsuits in Iowa if they injured anyone with their vehicle “who is participating in a protest, demonstration, riot, or unlawful assembly or who is engaging in disorderly conduct and is blocking traffic in a public street or highway,” the newspaper reported. That is, if the protest did not have a permit. If it did have a permit, they were not considered rioters. But few such impassioned protests come together far enough in advance to allow organizers time to go through government bureaucracy for approval — and, in any event, are generally intended to be disruptive. Participating now puts these people at risk of being bowled over if a driver knows he or she has immunity.

© Getty Images file Protesters march in New York City last year after the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. If New York state had a so-called “hit and kill” law, a nervous driver could head straight into this crowd while trying to leave the area, injure people, and not be charged.

The increasingly unstable mix of protesters and vehicles has provoked more legislative reaction that some say is indicative of disdain for liberal protesters and their perspectives — Black Lives Matter or otherwise.

A Boston Globe analysis found 139 U.S. instances of what researchers call vehicle rammings between Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021 that caused 100 injuries and killed at least three. Drivers had a range of motivations — racial hatred of protesters, anger about traffic backups, or fears of being stuck in a crowd. The paper found that less than half the driver incidents resulted in charges, and many of those were simply misdemeanours or traffic citations.

“There’s this kind of vigilantism that’s returning,” Nick Robinson, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, told the newspaper. The centre has tracked a sharp increase in legislative proposals in the U.S. to restrict the right to peacefully protest. “If we deem these protesters to be rioters,” Robinson is quoted as saying, “we’re going to take the law into our own hands. And if that means injuring them with our vehicle or killing them with our vehicle, we have an expectation that the state will protect us. That’s just a recipe for disaster.”

Though Republicans have also brought driver immunity bills in Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Rhode Island, observers believe it hasn’t been a result of nationwide co-ordination; the language in the bills has varied and many, as in Iowa, were triggered by local events. And it isn’t to say Democratic states always approve of the demonstrators but have as yet not passed such bills.

Tennessee state Representative Matthew Hill, one of the bill’s sponsors, seemingly underplaying the reasons behind such incidents, said “We don’t want anyone to be hurt, but people should not knowingly put themselves in harm’s way when you’ve got moms and dads trying to get their kids to school.”

Some judges have been blocking these laws. A federal judge in September stopped Florida from using the driver immunity provision, saying Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “anti-riot” law — the Combating Violence, Disorder, and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act — as a way to stop violent protests was unconstitutional. He found the law “vague and overbroad” and amounted to an assault on First Amendment rights as well as the Constitution’s due process protections.

DeSantis vowed to fight. “I guarantee you we’ll win that one on appeal,” he said.

Such earnestness over the issue scares activist Francesca Menes, chair of the Black Collective, a Miami group working to increase political consciousness and economic power of Black communities.

“It’s going to encourage people to want to hit people” with their vehicles, Menes told the Boston Globe. “People are going to be in their big trucks with their big Confederate flags to make it very visible to us … that they are willing to run us over and we cannot sue them for damages.”

In Oklahoma as well, Republican lawmakers pushed through a bill despite contrary voices. And back in Iowa, Republican state Senator Julian Garrett of Indianola, a suburb of Des Moines, liked his state’s mandate.

“We’ve got to stop this law-violating,” the Boston Globe quoted Garrett as telling his colleagues as they debated the Back the Blue Act in May. “We’ve got to stop this criminal activity if we possibly can.”

Garrett said he didn’t think a driver should be liable if they “accidentally run into somebody … who was out violating the law.”

But that young man who was knicked by Governor Reynolds’s car says the new law lends courage to already-stressed and frustrated citizens.

He saw repeated posts on social media of “the same Grand Theft Auto gif of someone getting flattened by a car, with the words, ‘I can’t wait for your next protest,’” the Boston newspaper quoted Jaylen Cavil. “I think it emboldens people.”

Mandryk: CP's lawsuit likely to add to Sask. disdain for railway

Murray Mandryk 

© Provided by Leader Post 

The recent CP lawsuit against the Saskatchewan government could be a costly, but it is the kind of thing that can also unite us.

At a time when Saskatchewan feels like it’s flying apart at the seams, we may have just rediscovered what’s historically bonded us together.

What may that be, you ask?

Our love of flat, open spaces? Believe it or not, not all Saskatchewanians are enamoured with living 365 days a year in cold, barren flatness … which is why we escape to Arizona’s warm, barren flatness.

The Riders? You’re more likely to find an agoraphobic in Saskatchewan than someone who will openly admit to not being a Rider fan. But not everyone cares about football.

Our love of farming and farmers? Maybe don’t get city people going on their true feelings toward today’s farmers. (See: Saskatchewanians who winter in Arizona.)

The weather? No. (See: Saskatchewanians who winters Arizona.)

But there has always been one force that was messing with Saskatchewan even before Day 1 on Sept. 1, 1905. Evidently, it continues to mess with us to this very day.

The Canadian Pacific Railway. The damn CPR. From many peoples, strength? Nope. Our provincial motto should really be: Multis e gentibus, rancidus CPR.

Rich. Poor. Rural. Urban. Left. Right. Country, rock or rap. New Canadian. First Nation. Old stock. Throughout our history, there has been nothing quite so unifying in this landlocked province as our collective disdain for this national railway.

So consider how absolutely glorious it is in these troubled times of division and anger to be brought together by the collective repulsion over a CPR lawsuit saying it should never ever have to pay a dime of taxes to the province.

Through a fantastic story by Leader-Post legislative reporter Arthur White-Crummey, we learned this week that Canadian Pacific Railway is suing the Saskatchewan government for $341 million because it feels a 141-year-old contract with the Canadian government means it is exempt from paying provincial taxes.

How earth-shattering is this story in Saskatchewan? Well, for the briefest of moments, an entire province stopped saying “Damn Trudeau.”

Lawyers for Canadian Pacific argued in Regina’s Court of Queen’s Bench this week that an 1880 contract incorporated in the 1881 CPR Act exempts the corporation from any provincial income, sales, fuel and capital taxes associated with its historic main line. While CP has paid this unconstitutional tax for a century, it — generously — is suing only to recoup taxes paid since 2002.

Most of the above is written tongue in cheek, but shelling out a third of billion dollars will have what Finance Minister Donna Harpauer described as “significant” impact on a provincial budget already struggling with pandemic costs and growing public debt.

“It’s unfair to the taxpayers of the province, because then they have to bear the brunt,” Harpauer told White-Crummey.

The court will now weigh both the tax law and constitutional complexity (the 1905 Saskatchewan Act required adherence to the CPR Act), but just as interesting is the not-so-dormant collective animosity the suit has stirred up in Saskatchewan’s court of public opinion. Truly, this is something only the CPR could do.

“The irony is that they hate (the CPR) but pretty much every town in southern Saskatchewan exists because of the railroads,” said Craig Baird, podcaster and historian who produced a series this summer on how the railroads developed Canada.

Baird, a former reporter with the Leader-Post, agreed the animosity toward the Canadian Pacific was spawned by the rather generous 25 million acres granted by the Canadian government that accompanied the tax exemptions, but it goes beyond this.

It was the railway’s absolute power that dictated where towns would be located and what they would be named followed by decades of control over everything from communities shipping out their wheat to getting their mail that’s defined the relationship.

It’s a historical reminder this province has always encountered shared difficulties — problems we’ve gotten past through consensus and collective response.

If this lawsuit can remind us of the importance of that, God bless the CPR.

Mandryk is the political columnist the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Civilian probes of sexual misconduct cases ‘appropriate and necessary’: top military officials

Amanda Connolly 

© Provided by Global News

 Canadian armed forces flag pictured in Trenton, Ontario on Tuesday May 11, 2021. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Lars Hagberg

Transferring military sexual misconduct cases to civilian authorities is a decision that is now "appropriate and necessary" given the growing lack of confidence in the Canadian military's handling of investigations involving its own, say the two most senior military justice system officials.


In a joint statement issued on Friday afternoon, the military provost marshall and the director of military prosecutions said the allegations emerging over recent months of sexual misconduct against senior military leaders has provoked a "crisis of public confidence in the military justice system."

That statement noted that, in the view of the two officials, military police investigators and prosecutors are "fully capable of investigating and responding to allegations of criminal and disciplinary offences, including sexual assault and other criminal offences of a sexual nature under the Criminal Code."

But they noted that they "are keenly aware that the proper functioning of any justice system relies on public confidence."

"The increasing lack of public confidence in the military justice system is a real and pressing concern," the statement added. "Consequently, exercising our authority as independent actors, we will implement Mme. Arbour’s interim recommendation immediately."

READ MORE: Military must transfer sexual misconduct cases to civilians: Anand

The provost marshall and director of military prosecutions said they believe a "greater emphasis" on civilian investigations and prosecutions for sexual assault and criminal sexual offences "is now appropriate and necessary."

"Canadians can be assured that the military justice system stands ready to act where the civilian criminal justice system is unable or declines to exercise its jurisdiction in these matters," they added.

READ MORE: Sajjan out as defence minister; Anita Anand takes helm of embattled military amid misconduct crisis

Defence Minister Anita Anand announced Thursday that she has “accepted in full” a recommendation from former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louise Arbour that civilians, and not military investigators, should handle military sexual misconduct cases.

Arbour was appointed in the spring to lead an external review into how best to fix the issue, described by experts as an existential “crisis” for the military.

While the problem has existed for decades, it is under renewed and intense condemnation following exclusive reporting by Global News that began in February 2021.

New women's minister says focus on men in order to combat gender-based violence

OTTAWA — Freshly appointed Women and Gender Equality Minister Marci Ien says as part of her effort to combat gender-based violence she intends to place a lens on men to understand why it happens in the first place.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

She said the issue is among her priorities for the department because it is "clearly unacceptable," and she wants to not only support women but focus on men to figure out the root causes of the problem.

"There is another part of this equation, and that is why does the violence happen," she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "If we're going to end it, we have to understand why it's happening in the first place."

The minister said her department will continue to conduct research on gender-based violence so that they understand the issue, identify gaps and find areas of improvement.

She also said that she sees Women and Gender Equality Canada as a "nucleus" that connects with all other ministries, because gender equality is at the centre of each one.

Ien made the remarks when asked about how she fits into efforts to address the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, given that other ministers have also been involved in the file.

In March the federal government launched a task force to address the unique challenges faced by women during the pandemic, led by Chrystia Freeland, finance minister, and Mona Fortier, who was then minister of middle-class prosperity but is now president of the Treasury Board.

Gender equality advocates have been sounding the alarm on a rise in gender-based violence during the pandemic, a trend which the United Nations has referred to as a "shadow pandemic."

Andrea Gunraj, vice-president of public engagement at the Canadian Women’s Foundation, said a national action plan to address violence specifically against Indigenous women and girls as well as two-spirit, transgender and non-binary people is important.

"This is a long-standing thing that Indigenous communities have been asking for," Gunraj said. "We've had many reports, we've had many recommendations, now's the time to act on it."

Advocates have been calling for the federal government to put in place stable funding for programs that work to end gender-based violence.

Katherine Scott, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said she is looking for more details regarding how the national action plan will co-ordinate responses at all levels of government.

Scott, who is the centre's director for gender equality and public policy work, said she is not just looking for a transfer of funds from the federal government to the provinces.

"We're looking for a collaborative, meaningful plan that tracks outcomes and commits to reporting publicly every year about reducing levels of violence among women and others fleeing violence," she said.

Gunraj said when it comes to national action on gendered violence, it's time to look at the full picture of how those solutions are funded.

Citing her past experience as a journalist, Ien said she has been aware of the lack of funding for women’s organizations doing this work.

“They were critically underfunded and frankly, undervalued by previous governments,” she said.

A report by Women’s Shelters Canada from 2019 surveyed hundreds of women's shelters across the country, finding that 74 per cent of respondents said that inadequate funding was a major challenge, while only five per cent said it was not an issue.

The report also showed that 61 per cent of shelters had not received an increase in operational funding from their main government funder for at least two years, and that one in five had not received a funding increase in 10 years or more.

Gunraj said while services that focus on prevention and intervention are considered the most effective at alleviating the problem, "they have always gotten the smallest slice of funding compared to the government-led bodies that have addressed things only after they've already happened."

By contrast, said Gunraj, billions have been set aside for policing, prosecution and prisons, even though research shows these responses are not as effective in addressing gendered violence.

Gunraj noted that gender-based violence tends to be under-reported, pointing to Statistics Canada data that in 2016 indicated 70 per cent of people who experienced spousal violence and 93 per cent who experienced childhood abuse had not spoken to authorities.

She also highlighted work by University of Ottawa professors Rakhi Ruparelia and Elizabeth Sheehy that showed when racialized women report violence, their experiences are often taken less seriously in the criminal law system and their perpetrators receive less harsh punishments.

"I think if we were to switch that funding model and supercharge those organizations that do it right, and those bodies that do it right, I think we would see a shift."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2021.

___

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Erika Ibrahim, The Canadian Press

'They're afraid they won't come back:' Petition wants elder care in Nunavut

IQALUIT — Aani Uqaitu hasn't been able to see her 89-year-old mother for six months since she was sent to a long-term care home 1,200 kilometres away from Sanikiluaq, Nunavut.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Uqaitu's mother, who has dementia, is one of many Nunavut elders who are flown to Southern Canada every year for care.


The territory does not have the capacity to care for elders with complex needs. Nunavut's Health Department says there are 43 elders currently living at Embassy West Senior Living in Ottawa.

A petition to build an elder care home in each of Nunavut's 25 communities hopes to change that. The petition has received over 19,000 signatures in the last month.

"It's been really hard," Uqaitu told The Canadian Press.

In October, a group of elders in Baker Lake, Nunavut, protested outside the community's elders centre, which closed in 2018. They held signs that called for it to be reopened.

There are elders centres in Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven and Igloolik. There are also assisted-living facilities in Arviat and Iqaluit. A long-term care centre is to open in Rankin Inlet in 2023.

Manitok Thompson, a former Nunavut member of the legislature who now lives in Ottawa, started the petition with her friends after seeing more and more elders sent to the south over the years.

Thompson said she spends much of her time visiting them at Embassy West and crying with families who have to leave their loved ones behind.

"I was shocked. I got very emotional," she said. "It's just not right."

Thompson, who speaks Inuktitut, said she regularly gets requests from Nunavut residents to visit their family members in Ottawa.

"I've heard so many stories of 'she died alone' or 'he died alone,'" Thompson said. "The spirit dies. It's too different. The language is not there."

Often she'll bring the elders familiar country foods like cooked seal meat. Her friends bring it down for her when they come to Ottawa. Sometimes she brings containers of it back when she visits Nunavut.

Uqaitu, who lives in Sanikiluaq with her family, has been through this before. Her father died at Embassy West last year, but she couldn't see him because of pandemic restrictions.

"I'm always afraid that it might happen again with my mom," she said. "She always says she wants to go home."

Recently, a doctor told Uqaitu her mother had stopped eating. Herequested that the elder be given a meal replacement formula.

"She always lived on country food. She doesn't want to eat white people's food," Uqaitu said.

She and her husband have full-time jobs and, like many people in the community, were not able to keep their parents at home.

"There are elders here who don't want to be sent out to Embassy West. They're afraid they won't come back."

Thompson hopes Nunavut's newly elected members of the legislative assembly will table the petition when the assembly sits later this month. She also wants the assembly to create a special committee to look at bringing elder care home to the territory.

"This petition is a cry for help. The elders are not going to complain," Thompson said.

"Leaving somebody is very, very difficult. But what choice do they have?"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2021.

___

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship

Emma Tranter, The Canadian Press

Indigenous leaders concerned over B.C.'s process for old-growth logging deferrals

VANCOUVER — Indigenous leaders in British Columbia have expressed concerns over the tight timeline and lack of support in the government's plan for old-growth logging deferrals, while they underscore the urgency of preserving at-risk ecosystems.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A panel of scientific experts mapped 26,000 square kilometres of old-growth forests considered at risk of irreversible biodiversity loss, and on Tuesday B.C. asked First Nations to decide within 30 days whether they support deferrals.

The province has said nations may indicate they need more time and discussions in order to incorporate local knowledge into the deferral plans, such as identifying and including old-growth forests that are at risk but missing from B.C.'s maps.

A 30-day time frame for such complex analysis is "totally unreasonable," Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said in an interview.

In the meantime, the government is still allowing logging in the old-growth ecosystems identified as being at risk of permanent loss, Phillip said.

The province has stopped selling BC Timber Sales licences over the 26,000 square kilometres,Forests Minister Katrine Conroy told a news conference this week.

Any deferrals implemented through agreements with First Nations would last two years, after which the forests would either remain off limits or be included in sustainable management plans that prioritize forest health, Conroy said.

Asked about nations that may not want to stop harvesting in the areas proposed by the panel, Phillip said "the issue is not who does the logging."

"The issue is to protect, preserve and defend old-growth forest stands."

Jasmine Thomas,acouncillor with the Saik'uz First Nation, said her community is involved in forestry and they're not asking for all harvesting to stop, but "business as usual can't keep happening, logging can't keep happening" in areas of at-risk old-growth while the nation works through its long-term resource management plans.

Saik'uz has conducted technical work in its territory in central B.C., which has found "not only old-growth areas being diminished drastically, but also other related resources such as fisheries, wildlife and watersheds," Thomas said in an interview.

That work has also identified areas that could be suitable for harvesting to mitigate the impacts of reducing the timber supply on the forestry industry, she said.

"Mind you, we have all been aware that this decrease in annual allowable cut was going to be coming, in relation to the biodiversity crisis that we're experiencing and issues such as wildfire, (pine) beetles and other cumulative impacts," Thomas said.

Saik'uz issued a declaration last month that free, prior and informed consent must be obtained for any logging and resource development in its territory.

While Saik'uz technicians are busy reviewing B.C.'s deferral plans, Thomas said some neighbouring communities are facing resource and capacity challenges. It will also take time for nations to consult their own members, she noted.

The First Nations Leadership Council, which includes the executives of the chiefs union, the B.C. Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Summit, issued a statement Thursday, saying it was "extremely concerned that old growth remains unprotected today, and that the province has passed responsibility to First Nations without providing financial support for nations to replace any revenues that might be lost if they choose to defer logging old growth in their territory."

Terry Teegee, regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, said in the statement "the lack of proper consultations with First Nations prior to the announcement, as well as the government's failure to provide details on transition financing and financing for Indigenous-led conservation solutions, all point to the province's repeated pattern of advancing a mismanaged forestry landscape that fails to uphold Indigenous title and rights, jurisdiction, and decision-making."

B.C. has adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Teegee said the province must fully inform nations on how the deferrals would affect their communities before potentially obtaining consent.

Maps of the proposed deferral areas were shared with First Nations about a week before the government announcement, the Forests Ministry said in a statement.

"We will be working with First Nations through established forums and protocols to do this important work," it said. "For those nations that do not have these in place, staff will be reaching out to those nations to begin the engagement process."

B.C.'s deferral plan includes just shy of $12.7 million over three years to support First Nations through the process, but no further funding was announced.

That amounts to about $20,000 per year for each of more than 200 First Nations across B.C., said Phillip, calling the funds "totally insufficient to undertake the work."

Environment Minister George Heyman was asked about the funding at a news conference in Glasgow, where he was attending the United Nations climate talks.

The $12.7 million is meant for "the initial stages of conservation planning and considering deferrals," intended not as the end of funding, but as a "signal" that First Nations would have some support, Heyman said, noting forestry is not his portfolio.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2021.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press

Hearing on Baffinland mine expansion ends, board to make recommendation

IQALUIT, Nunavut — The hunters and trappers association in the community closest to an iron ore mine on the northern tip of Baffin Island doesn't want to see the mine expand its operations, saying the effects have already been palpable.

 

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. is seeking to expand its Mary River iron ore mine near Pond Inlet by doubling its annual output from six to 12 million tonnes.

Speaking on the last day of a public hearing on the mine's proposed expansion, Enookie Inuarak of Pond Inlet's hunters and trappers association said the mine's effects on the surrounding environment "have already been significant."

"We have seen impacts on marine mammals already ... We are exhausted by constantly having to give evidence of impacts of Baffinland's operations on Inuit," he said.

Inuarak also said many members of his community are divided on whether they want the expansion to go ahead. One the one hand, the mine provides residents with jobs, while on the other hand it could have negative effects on hunting, he said.

"We don’t want to sacrifice our culture and traditions for the sake of money and benefits. We ask other communities not to sacrifice us."

The public hearing on the mine's proposed expansion finished on Saturday in Iqaluit, two years after it began. The Nunavut Impact Review Board, the territory's environmental assessment agency, heard from representatives from Nunavut communities, the Nunavut government, the Government of Canada and environmental groups.

The mining company wants to build a 110-kilometre railway to transport the ore from the mine to the ocean. It would be the most northern railway in Canada and the first in Nunavut.

The community of Pond Inlet, which is about 176 kilometers from the mine, has opposed the proposal and protested against it earlier this year by blocking the mine's road and airstrip.

The proposed expansion also includes a benefits agreement between Baffinland and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which represents Inuit on Baffin Island. But Inuarak said he believes the benefits won't outweigh the cost of the expansion's effects on the animals harvested around Pond Inlet.

"When you talk about benefits, it sounds like you’re trying to buy us," Inuarak said. "Our culture and our traditions are not for sale."

Other North Baffin communities near the mine are concerned about what effects the proposed expansion would have on wildlife.

Alan Kormack from Clyde River told the board he does not support the expansion.

"Baffinland has not convinced us that this project will be safe," Kormack said. "Our wildlife and sea mammals are being depleted. They’re not around anymore."

Baffinland has said it can't continue to be profitable without increasing production.

The hearing resumed on Monday after it was suspended in April because of a COVID-19 outbreak in Iqaluit. It has stopped and started several times, having originally began in November 2019.

On Nov. 6, 2019, two years ago today, the hearing was abruptly adjourned when Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. put forward a motion to suspend the proceedings. At the time, the Nunavut Land Claims organization argued Inuit had not been properly consulted on the project.

All interveners have until Nov. 22 to submit written closing statements to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, which will then make a recommendation to federal northern affairs minister Dan Vandal whether to approve the proposed expansion. Vandal will then have the final say on whether the expansion will go forward.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2021.

---

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Emma Tranter, The Canadian Press