[Canada] Paradis wants poverty seen as human rights breach

from The Orangeville Citizen

By MANDI HARGRAVE Staff Reporter

Former Orangeville resident Emily Paradis is working to have homelessness and poverty viewed as a violation of human rights.

To do this she travelled to Geneva, Switzerland, to speak before the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights with a group of homeless women from Toronto, where she now lives.

The UN committee this month reviewed Canada's compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as that of Monaco, Liechtenstein, Morocco and Mexico.

The treaty came into effect in 1976 and since then all countries who signed it are required to submit a periodic report to the committee.

Canada was grilled for two days because the committee hasn't seen improvements in poverty, homelessness, indigenous and migrant rights since its last review in 1998 when the they expressed grave concerns about welfare cuts in Ontario, women's poverty and high rates of homelessness across the country.

"At that time the committee was very, very critical of Canada because of the levels of poverty and homelessness here, because of the treatment of aboriginal people and especially because of the poverty levels among specific groups like aboriginal people, single moms and African-Canadians," said Ms. Paradis.

"So they made a number of strong recommendations in '98 about adopting a national coordinated strategy to deal

with homelessness and raising social assistance rates across the country, re-establishing national standards for social assistance rates, which had been removed in 1995."

She said Canada "essentially just didn't follow through with any of the recommendations that happened in '98."

She said Canada submitted two reports to the committee this year that were reviewed at the same time and a number of non-governmental organizations submitted parallel reports to provide the committee with a more rounded view of what's really going on in Canada.

Having completed her M.Ed., she is going for her Doctorate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and has been working in the area of homelessness and poverty for 15 years. She has even worked on the front lines at shelters and drop-in centres.

As part of her program she started a project called FORWARD (Feminist Organization for Women's Advancement, Rights and Dignity), a social action group of women living in poverty who have been or are homeless. It operates at a Toronto drop-in centre called Sistering.

The organization has been meeting for a year discussing social and economic rights. Women told how their stories related to these issues and out of the discussion and analysis they developed a report that they sent to the UN.

The group of women chose Doreen Silversmith to represent them at the UN, where she gave a speech and was accompanied by Ms. Paradis.

Ms. Silversmith told her story and the other women's stories and begged the committee to scold Canada on its human rights violations and to have their recommendations implemented.

While homeless and living in Toronto, Ms. Silversmith became pregnant and had her baby taken away from her instead of being provided with housing and support. She told of another women who was evicted from her apartment so her landlord could raise the rent and another who was fired when she asked for more shifts.

"We have grave concerns about women's poverty and homelessness in Canada," she told the UN committee. "Our rights are violated every single day. And any semblance to justice is based on Canada's unilateral laws of deception."

"But we stand up for the truth and are unafraid to reveal to the world Canada's dirty secrets. It has been our experience that when we tell the truth, Canada always tries to muzzle us. Well, we will not be silenced into submission. We are rightfully angry and you need to know that we are feeling tremendous pain," she said.

Ms. Paradis echoed her thoughts over the phone.

"One of the key messages of the presentation was that it's really important that the UN committee and also for the Canadian government to actually pay attention to the voices and knowledge of women who are poor and homeless."

"The knowledge of those women doesn't usually get listened to when it comes to making policies and even when it comes to talking about whether or not Canada is living up to its human rights obligations."

Ms. Paradis said Canada has an international image of being a place where human rights are respected, where there's great wealth and that everyone has a great standard of living. "People choose to immigrate here or seek refuge here on the basis of that reputation."

She explained that a woman she knows came from the Congo about six years ago. While still living there she was told that once you get to Canada you are given a place to live, a car and a job right away.

"Instead, the reality for her has been that she's been waiting since then to be reunited with her children. There've been incredible delays. She's missed the early childhood of all of her children, she's been separated from them and is struggling."

Ms. Paradis said this woman hasn't had regular employment and is struggling to pay her rent and to gather enough money to prove to the government that she can support her family.

"It's stories like that that people need to hear," she said.

"Not because we don't believe that Canada has the potential to be great and not because we're not proud. But because it's important for Canada to be held to account for what it's really doing in

relationship to people who are poor and marginalized."

She added, "The economic growth that Canada's been enjoying, the budget surpluses that we've had annually for the last eight years, the benefits of those things haven't been shared with everyone here. And we think that they should be distributed more fairly, so that everyone can enjoy the wealth that Canada has to offer."

Ms. Paradis is concerned that this next committee report will be ignored like the previous report. She said everyone has the responsibility to make sure Canada is held accountable to respond to the UN body and their recommendations and that it doesn't just drop out of sight.

"The reality is the hard work really starts now when we have to take these concluding observations and take our own report and just use them as much as we can to raise peoples awareness about what's really happening here and what peoples human rights are."

She said people need to know that adequate housing is a basic human right and that people who are not on social assistance don't understand how low it is. The current welfare rates are below the poverty line and after people living on it pay their rent they often don't have money for food or clothing.

"There's no reason for things to be this way," she said. "Social assistance rates in Ontario need to go up by 40 per cent and Ontario and Canada have the money to make that happen."

She also stated that in her opinion the Harris government was good at making it appear people on social assistance were lazy and didn't deserve to have a decent standard of living.

She stressed that people need to remember that having basic human rights is not something you earn by being a morally upstanding person. "In the same way that

we say people don't deserve to be tortured for being outside the norm, we should also agree that no one deserves to be homeless for being outside the norm," she said.

"People really need to look at those stereotypes that exist right now of poor people, homeless people and people on social assistance and really question them, and think about how they would feel if someone in their own family was being viewed that way or had to live under those conditions."

She said people know how it feels to struggle and think about when the money will be coming in, but that they need more empathy and compassion and to think about how it would feel to be treated like they were less than human just because of the fact that they are poor.

The UN committee will release its report tomorrow, giving Ms. Paradis and other FORWARD members a chance to react to it.