See full report on frontline social service groups at:
http://www.iapm.ca/newsmanager/anmviewer.asp?a=558&z=22

Darfur: The Montreal Conference

BPW opening Conference. Left to right the Hon. David Kilgour,
Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Lewis W. MacKenzie, Southern Christian
Leadership Conference President Dr. Charles Steele, Jr.

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Letter of congratulations from the Hon. Jason Kenney

A Special Visitor

With former Secretary of State Kissinger at the
Conference de Montreal

 At Israel Independance Rally

D'arcy McGee MNA Lawrence Bergman, Public Security Minister
Stockwell Day and BPW

Interviewing Stéphane Dion

The New Suburban

www.thesuburban.com

The Politics of Justice

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New Challenge

www.thesuburban.com

See announcement in full at the following link:

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Battling Hunger
Institute`s Citizen-based solutions

Elizabeth Nickson

Behind the scrim of the noisy war on terrorism, the United States
launched, in October, the largest domestic-policy initiative
of the past 40 years. With US$65-billion potentially at stake,
in the quick flourish of an executive order, faith-based charity
became the biggest social experiment in history. Lucky
for us, the Americans do all the dirty work. Canadians must
watch their progress with enormous interest. As the
Canadian Association of Food Banks makes clear, food-bank
use in Canada reaches 778,000 people a month and has
doubled since 1989. That's more than the entire population
of New Brunswick, points out a press release from
the organization, which appears to document its statistics
meticulously. The solution? "A comprehensive policy
to realize food security for all citizens," says the group.
Anyone else smelling a Charter challenge? Noble
as that would be, people are starving, and cannot wait for
the "right to food" to be written into the Constitution.
As Amy Sherman of the Hudson Institute says: "Kids
are dying on the streets, single moms are making $6
an hour. All hands on deck."

So a few Montrealers have taken matters into their own very
competent hands. A group of corporations and unions, at
the instigation of The Institute for Public Affairs, under the
stewardship of the magnetic Beryl P. Wajsman, have made
a commitment, in perpetuity, to feed as many as
half-a-million hungry Quebecers. This is Quebec civil
society in action. Working together, without a penny
from government to solve an immediate problem. According
to Wajsman, Charles Seiden, the executive director of
the Canadian Association of Food Banks "puts the
number of Canadians suffering through, as he calls it,
'food insecurity,' at three to four million." Not a pretty number
, especially when you consider the billions that Ottawa's
bloated bureaucracy flushes down the toilet on vanity projects.
Wajsman and his partners are planning to extend
their Quebec initiative across Canada.
What Beryl Wajsman and his fellows are doing seems to be the
Canadian version of a faith-based initiative. We must
hope that he succeeds -- and that more citizens take back the
fundamental responsibility for care of the
poor from a government that has failed.

On Social Justice
The Issue No One Is Talking About

The most unpleasant sound to a politician is silence. Just ask Ed Broadbent. The former leader of the New Democratic Party left Parliament in 1989 to pursue a career as a teacher and lecturer. But as he traveled the country talking up his favorite theme—the lingering “national disgrace” of child poverty—Broadbent was shocked by the degree of apathy. “No one paid attention,” he says.
 
It was Broadbent who pricked the nation’s conscience 15 years ago by reminding citizens that thousands of Canadian youngsters went hungry every night. The message struck a chord with a population that had prided itself on being a global model of fairness. In 1989, a year after the N.D.P. won 43 seats in its best-ever federal showing, Broadbent leveraged the party’s clout in what was then a Tory-minority government to secure a resolution pledging to “eliminate” child poverty by 2000. At the time an estimated 1 in 6 Canadian children lived below the poverty line. Not only did the pledge go unfulfilled, but things have got worse. The number of people earning less than $11,000 a year grew during the 1990s by 34%. About a million Canadians under the age of 18 are in dire need, according to Campaign 2000, a national antipoverty group.
 
And so the problem festers. True, much of the economic news is good: employment is at an “all-time high,” Bank of Canada economist Stéfane Marion told the Globe and Mail last week, adding, “We believe the economy could actually return to its production potential before the end of 2005.” But too many Canadians aren’t keeping up. According to Beryl Wajsman, president of Montreal’s Institute for Public Affairs, a third of the nation’s work force has less than two weeks’ salary in the bank. Canada, Wajsman says, has only a “thin veneer of affluence.”
 
Why aren’t we talking about this? Here’s one reason. While political leaders are scrambling to outbid one another with plans for spending the nearly $3 billion surplus stored up over a tough decade of budget cuts, few seem willing to risk appealing to the better angels of our nature. In 1968 Pierre Trudeau won Canada’s heart by promising a “just society.” The fear mongering that has come to dominate the campaign—the Liberals began airing TV spots last week implying that Canadians were at risk from guns, pro-lifers and foreign wars—suggests that party tacticians believe today’s voters are interested only in getting through the night safely. Wajsman doesn’t buy it. “They’re not giving the electorate enough due,” he says. “Social justice is the bread-and-butter issue of our time, but it takes political courage to bring this up.”

Fighting Censor

Thursday, May 17, 2007

BPW on the dangers of press councils
and self-censorship

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A Tale of Two Nazanins
A Victory for Valor

Saturday, February 03, 2007

To the editors
Re: "A Credit to Her Crown"

The Post is to be commended for highlighting Vancouver's Nazanin Afshin- Jam's successful campaign to free Nazanin Fatehi from Tehran's infamous Evin prison. Ms. Fatehi languished in prison for two years after being sentenced to death for stabbing a man who was trying to rape her. Since there were not four male witnesses to the attempted rape, as required by Shariah law, Ms. Fatehi was convicted of premeditated murder. Her case drew some media attention, but it was not until Ms. Afshin-Jam -- 2003 Miss World Canada -- took the lead that the world really took notice. The decision by Iran's judiciary to reverse itself is almost unprecedented.
At a recent Public Affairs of Montreal conference on "Questions of Values: Ways of Response to the Islamist Challenge," Ms. Afshin-Jam used Ms. Fatehi's story as a case study, illustrating the embedded discrimination that exists under Shariah Law. In this age of universal deceit, when as George Orwell wrote, "merely speaking the truth is a revolutionary act," Ms. Afshin-Jam's actions are truly a passionate profile in courage. Many in Canada like to argue that we are a "reasonable" society, not a passionate one. Yet the two are not mutually exclusive.

Passion is not the opponent of reason. Fear is. And lives fuelled by fear are not very much at all.

Beryl P. Wajsman, president, Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal

Nazanin Afshin-Jam (l.) at Amnesty International's World Day Against
the Death Penalty in Berlin demonstrating for Nazanin Fatehi

As many of you know we have focused much attention on air, and given moral and material support from the Institute, to the singularly heroic work of human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam in her efforts to free 18-year old Nazanin Fatehi from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison where she has languished for two years after being sentenced to death for stabbing the man who was trying to rape her. Fatehi’s case had drawn some world attention, but it was not until Afshin-Jam, who had already engaged in humanitarian work from Africa to Asia, put her life on hold to lead an international effort to save the life of this young girl facing the hangman’s noose because of Sharia law that the world sat up and took notice.

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Nazanin Afshin-Jam speaking at a recent Institute conference
http://www.iapm.ca/newsmanager/anmviewer.asp?a=499&z=22

www.theconservativevoice.com

NEWS & COMMENTARY

By Beryl Wajsman
A Canadian Profile in Courage
February 03, 2007

“Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from thousands of different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

~ Robert F. Kennedy

Many make the mistake that because we, as a society, strive for reason, that we must therefore abdicate passion. Yet passion is not the opponent of reason. Fear is. And a life fuelled by fear is not very much at all. Nazanin Afshin-Jam did not forget passion and did not submit to fear. In her single-minded pursuit of justice for Nazanin Fatehi she has served as an example for all Canadians making us realize that we are at our best when we transcend our narrow narcissisms and become involved in mankind’s transcendent yearnings for redemptive change.

http://www.iapm.ca/newsmanager/anmviewer.asp?a=508&z=22

INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS OF MONTREAL
INSTITUT DES AFFAIRES PUBLIQUES DE MONTRÉAL

10th Institute Policy Conference
“Questions of Values: Ways of Response to the Islamist Challenge “
October 25th, 2006
Delta Centre-Ville Hotel