NDP Critic for Women and Gender Equity Leah Gazan and NDP Critic for Crown Indigenous Relations Lori Idlout made the following statement on the 50th Anniversary of Helen Betty Osborne’s death:

NDP Critic for Women and Gender Equity Leah Gazan and NDP Critic for Crown Indigenous Relations Lori Idlout made the following statement on the 50th Anniversary of Helen Betty Osborne’s death:
Dear Minister Khera,
Congratulations on your recent appointment as Minister of Seniors. I look forward to working positively with you in order to advance the human rights of seniors in this country.
Ottawa—NDP MP Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre) has been named Critic for Women and Gender Equality, and Children, Families and Social Development. She has also been given the role as Deputy Critic for Housing.
NDP MPs in Manitoba, Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre), Niki Ashton (Churchill-Keewatinook Aski) and Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood-Transcona) are calling on Justin Trudeau to get back to work before November 22 and to reverse his decision to take away help for Canadians to get through the pandemic in the middle of the fourth wave.
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,
It was with great consternation and disappointment that reports were released about you, once again, misleading Canadians regarding your government’s failure to turn over all residential school records to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. The NCTR has, in fact, been calling on your government to provide the final versions of school documents, hospital records, federal health records, and day school records but has only been met with inaction.
WINNIPEG – NDP MPs Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre), Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood –Transcona), Niki Ashton (Churchill—Keewatinook Aski) and community advocates are calling on the newly elected Liberal government to reverse cuts to low-income senior’s payments through the Guaranteed Income Supplements (GIS) for accessing emergency supports during the pandemic.
Today’s announcement of the childcare funding agreement signed between the federal government and the Province of Manitoba is the result of decades of advocacy by childcare care advocates who tirelessly fought for families, caregivers, children, and early childhood educators for the last 28 years.
With the news of children being found in unmarked graves around residential schools throughout Canada, we have an opportunity to truly understand and reflect upon our legacy of colonization. This includes residential schools that were designed to “kill the indian in the child” and assimilate us, as it was believed that we were in the way of advancing the economic agenda of Canada. Residential schools were seen as one way to eliminate what the Canadian government defined as the “indian problem”. It is a system that enforced the violent kidnapping of our children for no other reason but for being who we are as Indigenous peoples in all our beauty, resiliency, brilliance, and strength.
As we celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day, our minds and hearts remain taken by the news about children who continue to be found around residential schools. It is a constant reminder of Canada’s violent colonial history with Indigenous peoples that continues today.