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.
WINNIPEG – Earlier today, the Liberal government voted against an NDP motion that would provide dental coverage to millions of Canadians who cannot afford dental care. The NDP proposal would have allowed 6.7 million people in Canada whose household income is less than $90,000 a year to access the dental services they desperately need.
Treaty 1 Territory and Homeland of the Metis Nation, Winnipeg, MB—Tomorrow, NDP MP Leah Gazan will ask for unanimous consent in the House of Commons for the federal government to recognize what happened at Canada’s Indian Residential Schools as an act of genocide.
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