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Results: 76 - 90 of 326
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
In your opinion, is Canada, at this point, in contravention of, for example, the rights of the child?
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
View Fionnuala Ní Aoláin Profile
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
2021-05-11 19:26
Canada and all of the other 57 states that have failed to repatriate their nationals are in clear breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child has explicitly found on this issue, not specific to Canada but in relation to other nationals, that the continued arbitrary detention of children in these camps is a breach of the convention.
View Patricia Lattanzio Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My next two questions will be for Mr. Landry, but before getting to those questions, I'd like to ask him to send us copies of the two articles he mentioned in his reply to my colleague.
Here's my first question, Mr. Landry: what do you think are the vitality factors on which the OLMCs and the various orders of government should rely in establishing a community base for intergenerational language transmission?
Rodrigue Landry
View Rodrigue Landry Profile
Rodrigue Landry
2021-04-22 16:09
I've written extensively on that subject, and I think early childhood is the leading factor. For example, I've heard from many spokespersons for various organizations. Mr. Forgues has written extensively on the interests that each association advocates. Some authors discuss neo-corporate interests, for example. In fact, all organizations want money so they can advance their own sectors. On the other hand, they don't agree on the importance of early childhood or, in particular, on increasing parent awareness in order then to encourage them to enrol their children in minority schools. However, everyone would benefit if we could really emphasize that. In overall terms, only 50% of the children of francophone minority communities attend French-language schools, although that figure comes from Statistics Canada's 2006 post-census survey on the vitality of official language minorities.
Consequently, I feel that the crucial factors are early childhood and education. Many encouraging points are also made in the white paper, which I recently read but hadn't read before I finished writing my article. It outlines some interesting aspects and, from what I understood, seems to single out early childhood.
View Patricia Lattanzio Profile
Lib. (QC)
Would you please send us the most recent study as well as the one from 2008 or 2009?
Second, I want to ask if you could tell us about the specific issues that exogamous families face. In that particular context, what are the consequences for the transmission of the minority language to the children of those families? What are the trends in their educational and linguistic path?
Rodrigue Landry
View Rodrigue Landry Profile
Rodrigue Landry
2021-04-22 16:12
Exogamy is a very interesting phenomenon. Take school enrolment, for example. Approximately 34% of exogamous parents in francophone minority situations send their children to francophone schools, compared to 88% of families where both parents are francophone. So you might believe that the entire burden rests on the shoulders of exogamous parents. However, our more in-depth analyses show that exogamy is the direct cause of failure to transmit the French language or to enrol children in francophone schools. Exogamy is a factor that influences the family language dynamic.
I like to compare exogamous families to the federal government. An exogamous family is a microcosm of society. In both cases, people have to learn to value both languages within the same unit. Politicians have to do it in Parliament, and parents in exogamous families have to do it with members of their own family. That's how I view the federal government's role, which is to increase awareness among parents. All parents want their children to be bilingual, but our surveys show that very few parents actually understand the issues involved. So-called additive bilingualism, which is acquired when you learn a second language without losing your first, is always better when you focus on the weaker language.
View René Arseneault Profile
Lib. (NB)
Thank you, Mr. Landry.
My next question is for Mr. Landry or Mr. Forgues.
You spoke earlier about community bases and the intergenerational transmission of the language. Which of the vitality factors should our OLMCs focus on? What should the different levels of government do to solidify this base?
Rodrigue Landry
View Rodrigue Landry Profile
Rodrigue Landry
2021-04-22 17:29
We have an action plan on official languages, but we have no plan for communicating with the main stakeholders, who are the parents. During my short introductory remarks, I mentioned that one of the factors that has been contributing to poor communication is that we are neglecting the main players. The federal government should keep parents informed.
Research has indisputably shown that when the emphasis is placed on the weaker language, children become extremely bilingual. We educate 80% of children in French and their English is as proficient as that of anglophones. They therefore become more bilingual. Parents need to be informed of this.
David Morin
View David Morin Profile
David Morin
2021-04-14 17:52
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. Good afternoon.
As my colleague, Laura Farquharson, indicated, my name is David Morin. I am the director general of the safe environments directorate at Health Canada.
I welcome this opportunity to discuss Health Canada's role in protecting the health of Canadians from environmental risks.
Specifically, I would like to spend the next few minutes speaking to Health Canada's activities related to the health of indigenous peoples and racialized communities and the environmental health risks they face. This includes risks associated with exposure to toxic chemicals, air pollution and water pollution.
Exposure to toxic chemicals represents an ongoing health risk facing indigenous peoples and racialized communities, as well as other vulnerable populations.
In response, Health Canada has been working to better integrate specific considerations for vulnerable populations when conducting chemical risk assessments and implementing risk management activities under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. These improvements include the establishment of a vulnerable populations panel to help better understand the real-life exposures of vulnerable populations to chemicals.
In parallel with these efforts, Health Canada has also undertaken science and research initiatives targeting the environmental health risks facing Canada's indigenous populations. For example, Health Canada, in partnership with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation as well as Indigenous Services Canada and other partners, recently completed the Sioux Lookout zone children's environmental health study.
The multi-year study was undertaken to characterize indoor and outdoor air quality in first nations communities in Canada because of the high levels of respiratory illness, such as bronchitis and pneumonia, in children.
The study provides valuable insights into the linkages between housing, indoor air quality and health.
We now better understand the current state of housing in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, but we also have a better understanding of issues related to air quality.
Finally, since 1991, Health Canada, along with other federal departments, has supported the northern contaminants program. The objective of this program is to reduce or eliminate contaminants in traditional foods and to provide information on contaminants to individuals and communities so they can better protect themselves. This program includes biomonitoring of contaminant levels in northern populations.
I wish to thank the committee for the opportunity to highlight examples of activities Health Canada has undertaken to address the environmental health risks faced by segments of the population.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Josh Berman
View Josh Berman Profile
Josh Berman
2021-04-13 16:03
Thank you.
Let me start by recognizing and thanking the federal government, MPs, and Canada's federal civil servants, for the critical and important work you are doing to support people living in Canada through this pandemic. Thank you.
I'm proud to represent today, along with Chad, from whom you'll hear in just a moment, our 84 clubs, which together serve more than 200,000 children and youth at over 775 locations across Canada. As one of Canada's largest child- and youth-serving organizations, our early learning and child care and our before- and after-school programs help young people develop into healthy, active and engaged adults.
Over the past 100 years and during these last 13 difficult months, our clubs have been there for vulnerable children, youth and families. Today clubs are providing food for families, partnering with their local food banks. We provide safe child care and programs for children and youth, and help to share trusted information on COVID safety and vaccines with our members. We have rolled out safe and high-quality digital programs when kids can't be in clubs.
Chad and I want to focus our remarks today on four key takeaways.
First, while the emergency community support fund allowed clubs to further step forward in the early months of the pandemic to support our communities, the needs in our communities continue to outstrip our ability to fully respond. Importantly, as the demand for our programs and services rises, it means more dollars out the door, not in.
Second, while the demand for our programs and services has risen, revenue has fallen. Our revenues across the country are down some $20 million after taking into account federal and other emergency supports due to large reductions in earned incomes and philanthropy. Programs like the Canadian employment wage subsidy have been extremely important in helping charities like BGC protect staff positions in the face of declining revenues. The extension of this program to June is positive and we support broad calls for further extension as the pandemic drags on.
Lastly, frontline human service charities are still facing serious fiscal challenges that have not been addressed by government programs to date, and are severely limiting our shared capacity to deliver services to communities that have borne the brunt of COVID-19's impact. A continued response to this crisis demands more. This is why we have joined others and continue our call for a community services COVID relief fund in next week's budget. This fund would provide a temporary, 18-month operating funding program to bridge our frontline agencies to the other side of this pandemic and support a transformation fund to help community services invest in their capacity, technology, operating models and mergers in order to come out of this pandemic stronger and more resilient.
We thank you, members of this committee, for your pre-budget recommendation for bridge operating grants for essential community human services organizations. These are organizations like ours that are run by and for those who serve Black, indigenous and people of colour, and are proud members of our shared economy, one that employs, I should say, 315,000 people across Canada. BGC has supported vulnerable community members for over 100 years and done so while balancing our books. This proposed fund wouldn't make us whole but would allow us to continue to provide child care and after-school programs, run safe transitional housing programs and offer newcomer support, virtual counselling and shelters for people experiencing homelessness and women fleeing domestic violence.
With that, let me pass it to Chad.
Chad Polito
View Chad Polito Profile
Chad Polito
2021-04-13 16:06
Thanks, Josh.
BGC Dawson is a community organization that has recently celebrated its 60th anniversary and serves over 800 families in the Montreal area.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought on some unique challenges for our community. Food security is one of our core programs. Pre-pandemic, we were serving 40 to 50 individuals per week through our food bank. At the height of the pandemic, this number skyrocketed to 941 people per month. While we are extremely grateful and thankful for the emergency community support fund, which enabled us to meet this need temporarily, we have more requests for food than we have resources. We had to make the difficult decision to scale back our food bank and are now serving just over 400 individuals each month, but the demand remains.
Summer camp, one of our key revenue-generating programs, was moved to a virtual format last summer and was offered free of charge. This significantly impacted our ability to meet our 2020 budget.
On top of that, our building is in desperate need of repair. This year, we invested over $100,000 in building maintenance and still have to plan to replace a leaking roof and an original furnace in order to be able to keep our doors open.
Our club, like others across Canada, had to make the difficult decision to lay off some staff and reduce program offerings. Approximately 70% of our staff nationwide are women, and we know that the services we provide allow mothers who so choose to enter and stay in the workforce.
Looking forward, we are committed to being there for our community and want to be in a strong position to adapt our programs to meet new realities. An article in the Financial Post on April 8 found that “the number of Canadians close to insolvency reached a five-year high”, with 53% of those polled saying that “they are $200 or less away from not being able to meet their bills and debt payments each month”.
We know that a lot of the families we serve are struggling financially and are just barely hanging on. As we move through this pandemic, organizations like ours need to be able to offer vital programs and services to all who need them, as part of our commitment to long-term community care.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
Paul Champ
View Paul Champ Profile
Paul Champ
2021-03-11 15:39
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, vice-chair and members of the committee. Thank you for this invitation.
I'm a human rights lawyer in Ottawa. I specialize in constitutional and international law. I've represented many Canadians detained abroad in a variety of different contexts. That's why I believe I've been invited to speak to you today.
I'm also going to discuss the issue that Mr. Mohammed just raised about the thousands of people who are held in Syria, in particular the 25 Canadian children who are being held in the two prison camps at al-Hol and Roj. We know there are 64,000 people in those camps, two-thirds of whom are children under 12, including those 25 Canadian children. UN investigators have described the conditions in these camps as appalling and inhumane.
Some humanitarian services have now been scaled back because of COVID. Workers from UNICEF and from MSF, Médecins Sans Frontières, have pulled back some of their services because some of their workers have contracted COVID in the camps.
The UN has also reported that many of these children are dying. They are dying from malnutrition, as well as dehydration, diarrhea and hypoglycemia. Their daily lives could not be more desperate were it not also for the violence in these camps. Exploitation and abuse is rife. People are killed by gunfire almost daily.
Committee members, I know you've heard about some of these dire reports. However, as a lawyer, I want to provide you with a different perspective. I want to advise you that in my legal opinion, Canada has a duty to take whatever measures are reasonably available to repatriate these Canadian citizens, especially the children. There can be no dispute that these children are being subjected to serious human rights abuses, such as arbitrary detention and cruel and inhumane treatment. The rights to life and security of the person are being jeopardized. There is also discrimination on a prohibited ground—nationality.
On that last one, the irony is that while Canada has not yet done anything for these individuals, those children are being detained now because they are Canadian citizens. Thousands of Syrians have been released from these camps, but foreigners and the children of foreigners continue to be held. Here's the tragic point in this: The Syrian defence forces want to release these Canadian children. Their condition: They want Canada to take them back. Unless and until Canada does so, they're going to continue to detain them indefinitely in these appalling and dangerous prison camps.
Canadian government officials will disagree with my legal opinion that's there's a duty on Canada to take action. They will say that the charter does not extend abroad and does not obligate the government to intervene to assist Canadians abroad in their efforts to leave a foreign country. In most contexts, I would agree with that, but I've been involved in other cases in which I've successfully compelled the Canadian government to return Canadian citizens to Canada when they were at risk of serious human rights abuse. That is the difference. Where Canada knows that a citizen abroad is at risk of a serious human rights abuse, such as torture or death, Canada can take measures. If it is within its power to diminish or alleviate that risk, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is triggered.
That's the crucial point in this particular humanitarian crisis. When the SDF says that they will only release these Canadian children if Canada agrees to return them, it is Canada that holds the keys to those prison camps. It is within Canada's power, and therefore Canada's responsibility, to repatriate these Canadian children from prison camps in the conflict-affected area. I'm sure they will never admit it publicly—and I see some members perhaps shaking their head—but I'm sure some Canadian government officials know that I'm right, or believe that I'm right, and that Canada's legal duties in the circumstances include repatriating people at risk of serious human rights abuses.
I know this because when faced with a lawsuit from a family with an orphan, Amira, in October, Canada returned her.
I'll leave you with this: You can think of this another way. What if China said tomorrow that they would release the two Michaels, but only if Canada would agree to come and retrieve them? Do any of us here doubt that there would be wheels up on a CF plane to China within hours? However, these children have been waiting for years. Let's not forget that the two Michaels travelled to China as adults, knowingly. These children are innocent. They did not make the choice to travel to a war zone, yet it is in a war zone that they are trapped. They are completely innocent. Canada has the power to return them.
Thank you.
Alex Kamarotos
View Alex Kamarotos Profile
Alex Kamarotos
2021-03-11 15:44
Good afternoon.
Let me first of all thank you warmly for the invitation to Defence for Children International. I'll start with a few words about the organization. I think we are the only non-Canadians here.
Defence for Children International is a leading child rights-focused and membership-based grassroots movement and is currently composed of 35 national sections across five continents. It was created in 1979, the International Year of the Child, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, reported the following at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council here in Geneva:
Much of the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by a failure to address previously existing structural causes of inequality, social exclusion and deprivation, and the inability of many countries, rich and poor alike, to meet the basic needs of a sizeable proportion of their populations.
This is equally applicable to children and the rights of the child, in particular during this pandemic. DCI has had the chance to count on some very relevant experience from such other health emergencies as the 2015 Ebola emergency in west Africa, where DCI-Sierra Leone and DCI-Liberia were particularly involved. In February 2020, the international secretariat and the entire movement mobilized in front of this pandemic. We very quickly gave alerts regarding the risk of violations exacerbated by the pandemic or even created by mitigation measures taken by states.
In my intervention, in complementarity with your earlier hearings, I want to touch upon two issues related to children. The first one concerns the impact of the pandemic on violence against children, including gender-based violence. The second is the impact on access to justice, in particular for children deprived of liberty. That touches upon the issue we just heard.
UNICEF reports that violence prevention and response services have been disrupted in 104 countries during the COVID pandemic. I believe we still only see the top of the iceberg regarding the impact of the COVID pandemic on violence against children, but it seems to be already well documented that COVID-19 and some of the mitigation measures taken by the governments have increased the exposure of children to different forms of violence, exacerbating such human rights violations as stigmatization, discrimination and xenophobia; child labour and unpaid work; child pregnancy; and harmful acts that include child marriage and female genital mutilation, as well as online abuse, bullying and exploitation. As the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children emphasized in her report to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this week, “What began as a health crisis risks evolving into a broader child-rights crisis.”
I also want to share our experience and results in the area of justice for children, in particular children deprived of liberty. DCI has been part of the origin—we are currently the co-chair together with Human Rights Watch—of a wide civil society coalition on children deprived of liberty. The NGO Panel for the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty is composed of 170 civil society organizations worldwide. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, has urged authorities since the beginning of the pandemic to look at releasing detainees and in particular low-risk child offenders. UNICEF data indicate that at least 31 countries have released children from detention because of concerns about the spread of COVID-19. This is certainly insufficient, and even lower than the number of adult detainees released.
Honourable members, I cannot finish this very short and certainly incomplete presentation without speaking about the impact of COVID-19 measures on the mental health of children and the importance of ensuring the meaningful participation of children on mitigation measures that concern them. Last year DCI organized child- and youth-led online debates on the impacts of COVID-19. We had very, very concrete results.
We also participated, together with a great number of other civil society organizations, in #CovidUnder19, an initiative to meaningfully involve children in responses to the pandemic, with participation from more than 26,000 children from 137 countries.
I want to quote from two of the children who participated in the initiative. The first one comes from a Bolivian girl: “I think the government should understand that children are not dumb and easily manipulated. Children should feel that trust and not feel like they have to remain silent. This would increase their confidence and [motivate them] to report injustice.”
Last but not least, a 16-year-old Canadian girl said, “Even though there is a pandemic going on, there are people out there who experience abuse daily. The awareness, even in Canada, on how to access the resources is not explained in the best way. Finding that information should be basic knowledge for any human being.”
I thank you.
Geoff Loane
View Geoff Loane Profile
Geoff Loane
2021-03-11 15:50
Mr. Chairman, vice-chairs and committee members, on behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross, I would like to express my gratitude for this opportunity to discuss this extremely important subject.
The role of the ICRC is mandated by the international community through the Geneva conventions, and our exclusively humanitarian role is to support the faithful application of international humanitarian law, and where appropriate, to support the protection and assistance of victims of armed conflict while respecting the core principles of humanity, neutrality and independence.
The impact of COVID-19 on the vulnerability of children in conflict-affected contexts is being felt and witnessed today throughout the world, and we will certainly see the outcome for years to come. It is a privilege to be able to share some of our own observations over the past 12 months. They must be taken as only preliminary observations, as the full impact of this pandemic has yet to be felt.
I would like to summarize my remarks into the following areas: education, detention, family links services, and recruitment by and association of children with armed forces and armed groups.
Education, by its nature, is the public service most vulnerable to shocks. That came tragically home to all of us in the space of a week in March 2020, when nearly two billion children in more than 185 countries stopped going to school and schools were closed. While many countries were able to adapt and respond with alternative learning platforms, the technical means are simply unavailable in most of the countries in which the ICRC is operational.
Because of school closures, children have been denied an opportunity to be learners and to make choices for themselves, and for many, a return to school is now precluded. Some have been forced into the workplace, some into early marriage and some into becoming homemakers. For the most vulnerable children in areas where the ICRC works, children who are displaced, refugees, in detention or simply relying on education as a protective mechanism in a conflict zone, perhaps to avoid recruitment by an armed group or perhaps to be able to eat one meal a day, the long-term impact of this school closure is likely to be catastrophic.
Last, we remain very concerned about the reported increase in levels of domestic violence, including the exposure of children to higher levels than previously recorded.
In places of detention, we have seen both positive and negative changes to the status quo. In some contexts, we have witnessed the positive impact of increased engagement by the authorities to review individual cases. In many different countries, there was an initial rapid release of detainees, often starting with children, as part of the efforts to free up space inside places of detention and to reduce the risks of infection for detainees. In some settings, COVID-19 has accelerated a judicial review process, whereas before COVID there was no particular urgency to look into the detention of children who may have been awaiting trial, had been detained without charge or already had served their sentence without yet being released.
However, on the other side, unfortunately, for children and indeed all detainees who remain in detention, COVID-19 has also meant the limiting of family visits, and therefore often the cutting off of valuable lifelines for children who both need and want to maintain contact with their loved ones, and more pragmatically, to receive food, clothing and medicine.
Across the world, COVID-19 has led to the closure of international borders, restriction of movements within countries or limited humanitarian access, including to refugee or IDP camps, to avoid spreading the virus even further. These things have had a direct impact on the family links services and the Red Cross movement's ability to carry out tracing at the same speed as before, or even simply to put families back in contact, as staff have not had anything like the same level of access to affected populations to distribute and collect Red Cross messages.
Cross-border family reunifications, which involve transferring a child from one country to be reunited with their family in another country, for which the ICRC is normally the humanitarian actor in charge of working with the authorities, have been complicated by different and interlinked factors. The border and embassy closures are an administrative hurdle. Accessing the child, which is never straightforward, has been made more challenging due to ongoing restrictions. The unaccompanied child's safety and supervision are problematic when one or several quarantines are necessary. Also, sometimes families can be afraid that the incoming child will be seen as bringing the virus into the community and will be stigmatized or worse.
As mentioned earlier, there is a fourth immediate challenge. It is too early to have detailed statistics from areas where ICRC works, but it appears that the worsening socio-economic situation is driving an increase in early child marriage, particularly when so many girls are out of school. Several children in one of the countries in the Sahel who were ready to be reunified with their families and whose reunifications were put on standby when the border closed have now refused to return to their families, as they married in the interim, clearly as a survival mechanism.
In the coming months, it is going to be very important to work with the authorities, other actors and the Red Cross Restoring Family Links program volunteers to ensure that these services can continue and that unaccompanied, displaced and migrant children are not exposed to greater risks than they already are.
Let us also remember that violations of international humanitarian law concerning children were already in existence. These have continued and have been exacerbated. Unfortunately, the recruitment by and the association of children with armed forces and armed groups continues to expose children to extreme levels of violence, risk and trauma.
In times of socio-economic hardships and when school is no longer an option, the push factors for children to join armed groups increase. Also, because of COVID-19, the authorities may have less access to areas where child recruitment is taking place, and official programs that aim to support children to leave armed groups may be reduced in scope.
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