rwmtest

A cartoon at the top of a National Post article explains quite well what has gone wrong with the Green Party of Canada, but for the opposite reasons than the journalists are suggesting. I was an active campaigner for the Global Greens movement within Ontario and Canada in the 1990's, hosting websites, and doing pretty much everything short of putting my name on the ballot. I've lived in Ottawa since 1987, and felt it inappropriate to parachute elsewhere or put my name forward as a uni-lingual anglophone. Several of my bilingual friends have had their name on the ballot. In a culture that valued such things I might be considered a community elder and knowledge keeper of the movement from that period. Given we don't live in such a culture, I'm being told by Annamie Paul supporters that I'm just an "angry white man". If you look at the Global Greens Values , it includes Participatory Democracy. This means that the Green Party Leader is supposed to act exact

I have been watching the debates on C-15 in the House of Commons and the Senate. Click "show sittings" on the different stages of the bill to read transcripts or watch video.  Please ask if you have never used this site, and have questions. Some of the most interesting discussions are happening at the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples . Study dates so far (click on webcast image to watch video): Friday, May 7, 2021 Monday, May 10, 2021 Friday, May 14, 2021   Most of the witnesses have been Indigenous.  They represent a wide variety of Indigenous perspectives from coast to coast, and into the north. Most want the bill passed quickly so this policy won't be delayed again as happened when the bill had the C-262 number. This includes some witnesses that submitted amendments to the House of Commons that were not included. Some witnesses have amendments that are a condition for their support, and a few want the entire process scrapped and start over. Listening cl

Over the years I have read many articles discussing how people believe the province of Alberta has a cycle of abuse with Big Oil . Until recently I agreed with this sentiment, that Alberta is the victim of an abusive relationship with extractive industries such as Big Oil. Since my anti-racism training lead me to a different understanding of Canada, and a more unbiased understanding of its history, I now have a very different perspective. Canada was created unilaterally by the passage in the British Parliament of the British North America Act 1867 to effectively be a corporate subsidiary of Britain, to be part of the British Empire, and to provide cheap resources to the empire (affirmative action for Whites and all that). It was never created to be a democracy, or to think independently.  It retains pretty much all of the British systems which were unilaterally imposed on this homeland. The British Parliament passed many laws called the " British North America Act " between

Many people have drawn conclusions based on the notion that the Canadian government is behind Bill C-15, and thus because the Canadian government has demonstrated itself untrustworthy over generated, the bill also can't be trusted. Knowing who helped create UNDRIP and C-15 may then help move the next steps forward once this bill is finally passed into law. Who isn't behind this policy? Canada (including its provinces) has been an opponent of this policy from the beginning.  The formal aspects of UNDRIP started in 1982 when the Working Group on Indigenous Populations was established, and Canada has been an opponent for the entire 39 years since. There are individual politicians (Members of Provincial Parliaments, Members of the Federal Parliament, Senators) who support, and they are largely but not exclusively Indigenous. The governments of Canada has been an opponent regardless of which party happens to have formed a government. The Conservative Governments and party spokespe

I sent in a brief to the committee for their study on March 25'th ( PDF ), but it was a bit too long so was asked to send in a more brief brief on April 12'th ( PDF , via OurCommons.ca ). I'm merging the footnotes from the earlier version for this blog. Introduction This is my ( My name is Russell McOrmond. Full contact information is at http://www.flora.ca/#contact ) first submission to parliament on this area of policy as I previously focused on technology law . I wish to offer myself as an example of a privileged white male who for most of my life was unaware of Canada's record on human rights. I believed what I was told, and now wants what I was told to match Canada's actions. European worldviews were embedded within the UN's conceptualisation of Human Rights as encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I do not believe UDHR was ever universal, and consider UNDRIP a critical step in that direction. I am aware of opposition to UNDRIP as adopted

My self-directed anti-racism training brought me first to studying racism itself (a system, distinct from individual prejudices), to Indigenous studies, to worldviews, and then to religion. I have been struggling with my own relationship with religion since I left Christianity in my late teens.   The Abrahamic Origin Story In Trans-Indigeneity, and a loss or lack of Indigeneity I referenced where/who I was from, and that the Indigenous worldviews of my peoples were long ago replaced by Abrahamic worldviews. In Is religious freedom camouflaging ongoing colonialism and empire building   I discuss how Abrahamic religions all share core worldviews, even if the various splinter groups disagree on specific details. (Christianity split from Judaism, Protestants split from Catholicism, Islam split from Christianity/Judaism, etc). The book of Genesis writes down the Abrahamic origin story, and from this we can see the core Abrahamic worldviews.  Much of what people think of as western worldvie