test blog 5

There's a movement to put the face of Tommy Douglas on the next Canadian $5 bill. Wouldn't that be wonderful? And wouldn't it be a kick in the pants to those who seek to privatize our health care system? Go here to nominate Tommy Douglas.

Today is International Safe Abortion Day. Because without access to safe, legal abortion, women can never be free. In North America, you can help ensure that women are able to access safe abortions by donating to abortion funds. The National Network of Abortion Funds (N-NAF) can show you how.

I'd love reader feedback on these three questions. I know most people will reply on Facebook, which makes it really difficult to save reader reaction. But there's no stopping that train, so... copy/paste/save. Instapot Yes, I know it's an Instant Pot. I like to call it an Instapot. I think the Instant Pot folks missed an opportunity. I'm late to the Instapot bandwagon, but I'm glad I waited before jumping on. I bought a huge 8-quart Ultra, which is big enough for the batch cooking I prefer, has all the features, and has more safety features than the early models. I love  making steel cut oatmeal in this thing, and also rice. It is so easy, and it comes out perfect  every time. Steel cut oats don't actually take less time in the Instapot than on the stove top. Factoring the time to pressurize and the natural release, it's about the same time on the clock. But using the stove top, you have to stand there and stir. And if you don't pay attention, and someti...

So far, my experience with health care in our small BC town has been excellent. Limited sample size, anecdotal, non-scientific, yes. I'm just reporting on what I've experienced and observed in the past nine months, plus a few facts about funding. Port Hardy Our town of about 4,200 people has a primary health centre and a hospital. It's a regional hub for many tiny communities on the North Island. (There are also two other health units in neighbouring towns.) The health centre is a bright, clean, thoroughly modern facility. The signs are all in English and Kwak'wala, the local Indigenous language. There is a big, affirming, trans-positive sign on the washroom. I haven't been able to get a family doctor yet; all the doctors' rosters are full. However, we are always able to see a doctor, either whoever is on duty that day, or you can request an appointment with a specific doctor. So even though I don't have a family doctor, I make appointments with a doctor tha...

Today I attended a working meeting that included almost all the service providers in the region. These service providers were brought together by the Mount Waddington Health Network to build a coalition that will deal with the housing crisis. I was there mainly to stay informed and to network, and to keep the library visible -- and because so many groups that I will work with were also there. Three thoughts. * * * * These organizations are doing amazing work by working together rather than in silos -- more efficient (no duplication of effort), more strategic (not competing for the same funds), and stronger (speaking in one voice). This process -- a multi-year plan -- has seen real results in several places, and I expect it will in the North Island, too. The people are great -- sharp, committed, experienced, inclusive, taking a holistic view. I was so impressed. But. But I can't help thinking, all this would be unnecessary if housing were a human right in our society, and if this...

I am very frustrated by progressive reaction to Doug Ford becoming the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. People are acting as if Ford has already won an election that is three months away. I understand there is great -- and well-deserved -- anger against Kathleen Wynne's Liberal party. But are we progressives going to stand helplessly staring at polls as we are thrown from frying pan to fire? Under 20 years of Liberal governments, public spending has been frozen, resulting in a decrease of more than 40% in public resources. Corporate taxes are at all-time low. Privatization is strangling both services and jobs. And now -- supposedly -- we're all going to vote for more of the same. Either literally more of the same in the Liberals or worse than that in the Conservatives. And supposedly, we won't vote NDP because the NDP can't win. We won't vote for a party because the party can't win because not enough people will vote for it. How stupid do yo...

I recently attended the CUPE Ontario Library Workers Conference, which has become a highlight of my year since I first attended (and was elected to the organizing committee) in 2015. It has eclipsed and replaced the OLA Superconference as the most relevant and enjoyable must-attend conference in my schedule. When I first got my librarian degree, I was very excited about attending my first "OLA" (as it's always called). But I quickly learned that the sessions are a crap-shoot, sometimes relevant but often obvious and dull. There's also a great deal of boosterism by OLA and the member libraries. For the difference between the two conferences, for OLA, think employers and libraries , for CUPE Ontario, think  labour and library workers . In recent years, our Library Workers Conference has focused on precarious work and health and safety issues, two themes that are inextricably linked. This year's conference was called "Sex, Drugs & Bed Bugs," a light ...

As part of my continuing efforts to post here rather than -- or at least in addition to -- Facebook, here are some thoughts on the latest horrific massacre in the US, the country music festival in Las Vegas. First, the inevitability of recurrence. When hearing about mass shootings in the United States, the worst part -- the most tragic, the most outrageous part -- is the certainty of knowing that nothing will change. That it will happen again, and again, and again. A solution is known, of course. We won't end the culture of violence that permeates the US, but we can end access to large numbers of deadly weapons. The fact that the vice grip of a deadly special interest group outweighs the basic human rights of life and safety speaks volumes about the US political system. The congressmembers and senators who are bought and paid for by the NRA can never wash the blood off their hands. Second, the true body count. Allan and I were talking about what it might have been like to be there...

This month, four decades of anti-woman, anti-abortion hysteria in the US hit a new low. Last August, an Indiana woman sought medical attention after a premature delivery resulted in the death of the fetus. The emergency-room doctor called the police. In April, that woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison. From WaPo : Indiana woman jailed for "feticide." It's never happened before. ...Informed that officials were heading to her home, Patel told her doctors that she'd had a miscarriage and had left her stillborn fetus in a dumpster behind a shopping center. Still in his hospital scrubs, McGuire followed police cars to the scene and examined the fetus, which he pronounced dead on arrival. Patel was charged with child neglect, and later with killing her fetus, and on Monday she was sentenced to 20 consecutive years in prison. The verdict makes Patel the first woman in the U.S. to be charged, convicted and sentenced for "feticide" for ending her own pregnancy, ...

A few days ago, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Harper Government's denial of health care to refugee claimants from certain countries is unconstitutional and cannot stand. In a surprisingly strongly worded statement Friday, the federal court ruled Ottawa’s cutbacks to health-care coverage for refugee claimants are unconstitutional because they constitute “cruel and unusual” treatment. The decision was quickly lauded by many, including the Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and Justice for Children and Youth — groups that, along with two refugee claimants, challenged the law. Of course the Government plans to appeal, but the decision will be difficult to overturn. The Government and its complicit media partners can lie to the public - fabricated stories of refugee claimants who supposedly receive better health care than Canadians, calling refugees whose claims are rejected by the Government "bogus" - but hoodwinking th...

I want to share two articles from well-respected venues reflecting on what's happening to Canada now - where it is and where it may be going. In The Lancet Global Health , one of the foremost medical journals in the world, there's "A rising tide: the case against Canada as a world citizen", Chris David Simms. It begins: A generation ago, Canada was perceived to be an exemplary global citizen by the rest of the world: it took the lead on a host of international issues, including the Convention of Child Rights, freedom of information, acid rain, world peacekeeping, sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime, and humanitarian and development assistance—much of this under conservative leadership. During recent years, Canada's reputation as a global citizen has slipped, in recent months more precipitously than ever before, and in new directions. The Climate Action Network recently ranked Canada 55th of 58 countries in tackling of greenhouse emissions. Resul...

It's so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's the first line of Ned Vizzini's excellent 2006 youth novel, It's Kind of a Funny Story . By the time I read the book this year, the author was already dead. Vizzini committed suicide last December; he was only 32 years old. Those facts alone are tragic. But now that I've read this book, I find Vizzini's death even sadder. On some level, I chide myself for that: every person's life is of equal value, and every early death is a loss. But we feel the way we feel, and Vizzini's suicide feels, to me, inexpressibly sad, a monumental loss. Vizzini wrote youth fiction in a natural, straightforward voice, with deep insight and wry humour. It's Kind of a Funny Story is a slightly fictionalized account of the onset of the author's depression as a teenager, and the five days he spent in the psychiatric unit of a hospital in Brooklyn, New York. It's a funny book, often poignant, sometimes very ...

Since moving to Canada in 2005, my experiences with Ontario's health care system have been extremely positive. Through the public system, my partner and I have been able to access health care whenever we needed it, in convenient and pleasant settings, at no cost - that is, paid for with our taxes. The quality of care has been at least as good, and often superior, to anything I experineced in the United States. I love our public health care system, and I would love to see it expanded.* Single-payer, nonprofit health care is the only system that makes any sense. When I fractured my foot , I experienced a flaw in the Ontario system for the first time. The consequences for me happened to be minimal, but many people are affected seriously, and negatively. And apparently, the flaw stems from attempts to improve the Ontario health care system. Like many people, I had no idea that bones in my foot actually had fractured. I couldn't put any weight on my foot without excruciating pain, b...

I was in the middle of writing a post about my plan to get back into an exercise routine... when I broke my foot. Doing almost nothing. Walking along in the mall, on my way to get my hair cut and then go to work, my ankle turned over sharply. I was horrified, thinking it was yet another ankle sprain. But no... turns out it's a three-part fracture in my foot. I was worried at first: if I could break a bone just by walking, is there a problem with my bone density? Are my bones becoming fragile? But I've learned that fractured foot bones are very common among people who have a history of ankle injuries. Every time your ankle turns over, a ligament pulls at those small, friable bones in your foot, weakening them. This was an accident waiting to happen. I was very sad and frustrated at my ruined plans to be more physically active. But before long, those feelings were replaced with relief that this happened after our trip to Spain and not before. I'm in a walking cast, like a sk...

Wladyslaw Lizon, Member of Parliament for Mississauga Cooksville East (my own riding), is back in the news. The Conservative MP has teamed up with two of his fellow backbenchers in an attack on Canadian women's reproductive rights. The last time Lizon surfaced , he had "alerted" Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney that a Mississauga woman had worn a niqab during a citizenship ceremony. Thanks to Lizon and Kenney, face veils are now banned from those ceremonies. This man is anti-choice in more ways than one. More recently, Lizon, Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon—Wanuskewin), and Leon Benoit (Vegreville—Wainwright) demanded that the RCMP investigate all later-term abortions performed in Canada over the last decade. According to these MPs , the doctors who performed these procedures should be charged with homicide. The three MPs claim that there were 490 later-term terminations performed in Canada between the years 2000 and 2009. Where did the men get this 490 numb...

This is the final post of my notes from the 2012 Marxism Conference. This was the first Marxism conference to include a talk on disability, an exciting development full of potential. I wanted to blog about it in great detail. A friend was recording the talk, so I stopped taking detailed notes... and then the audio didn't come out. Melissa Graham was kind enough to give me her notes, but the others didn't have anything written to share. What follows, then, is the general idea. What does disability have to do with capitalism and socialism? Where do disability and socialism intersect, how do they relate to each other? * * * * From Each According to Their Ability: the Role of Socialists in Disability Movement May 25, 2012 Melissa Graham, Michele Macaulay, Patricia Reilly Melissa Graham Member of IS Canada, Social Worker, Disability Rights Activist, Wheelchair User Melissa began by praising Marxism 2012 for being the first of the annual conferences to include a talk on disability, b...

The Harper anti-choice brigade is back in the news, this time taking aim at a different abortion controversy to try to chip away at our fundamental rights. Wladyslaw Lizon - sadly, the MP for my own riding - is holding forth against later-term procedures. (You may remember Lizon's name through his memorable Islamophobia, which caused Jason Kenney to forbid the wearing of niqabs during citizenship ceremonies.) When it comes to later-term abortions, don't be fooled. The overwhelming majority of abortion procedures in Canada are performed in the first trimester of pregnancy. In the tiny minority performed later, the fetus is either dead or non-viable, or the woman's life is being endangered by the pregnancy. Women needing later-term abortions are usually in dire circumstances, mourning the loss of a wanted pregnancy. Even if a Canadian woman wanted to obtain a late-term abortion on a healthy fetus, she could never find a doctor to perform it. But whether it's sex-selected...

I decided to try acupuncture again. In October, I saw my nephew and niece-in-law who practice Traditional Chinese Medicine and other holistic healing methods. They encouraged me to use our small insurance benefit on more treatment, even though I can't afford to continue it past that. I purposely started in December, so I could use the acupuncture allowance for 2012, then go straight into the benefit for the 2013 calendar year, for maximum bang for my insurance buck. I definitely feel a change. I have more energy, my head is clearer (less fibro fog), and I am cooler . Like many women my age, I am always overheated. My face is usually flushed, and I have frequent and pronounced hot flashes. I always ran warm - always preferred winter to summer, rarely complain about the cold, and so on - so this age-heat thing has been pretty dreadful. And suddenly, it's 90% gone. The doctor expected immediate results and seemed frustrated that it took five or six treatments to start working. He...

The Harper Government continues to scapegoat the most vulnerable among us, demonizing refugee claimants, denying them due process, forcing them out of Canada. Yesterday we heard that four people arrested at the border were part of a human smuggling ring. Peter Showler, director of the Refugee Forum at the University of Ottawa and the former head of the IRB, says: What we are looking at here is people who may very well be valid refugee claimants who will be in jail for more than six months; people who may very well be victims of discrimination, if not persecution, and they will have to prove those refugee claims while they are in prison. If these four people are victims of human smuggling, and they have managed to make their way to Canada, Canada should be protecting them, not persecuting them. Those refugee claimants already living in Canada are having an increasingly difficult time. Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care continues to document an increasing number of refugee claimants e...