The full press release from the Green Party of Canada:

Canada, April 06, 2011 — Salil Shetty, the global secretary-general of Amnesty International, delivered a blistering attack on Harper’s record on human rights actions, in a report released March 31 entitled Getting Back On The ‘Rights’ Track.  “Globally, Canada’s reputation as a reliable human-rights champion has dropped precipitously,” Amnesty stated.  Green Leader Elizabeth May responded, “Canadians are aware of the current Government’s indifference for human rights and its disdain for the organizations that defend them.  There has been a definite drift away from the traditional Canadian values of taking leadership in human rights and a change of government is urgently required to rebuild trust.”

Canada once took a leading role in such issues as the creation of an international criminal court and protections for child soldiers.

The cumulative effect of several negative moves in recent years should be of concern to all Canadians. These include the reluctance to sign new UN rights declarations, a one-sided stance on Middle East rights issues, lack of accountability for the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, and a failure to stand up for the rights of Canadian aboriginals and Canadians accused abroad.  Specific examples include:

• Ignoring a Supreme Court recommendation to bring Omar Khadr home from the infamous prison in Guantanamo Bay, who at the time of the alleged action was a child soldier.  The Supreme Court ruled that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was breached in Omar Khadr’s case. The Canadian Bar Association president Parker MacCarthy referred to Khadr’s treatment as a “travesty of justice.”
• Both the RCMP and government officials were complicit in the torturing of Maher Arar.
• The government ignored and then attempted to suppress information regarding the torturing of Afghan prisoners under Canadian command.
• There has been ongoing evidence that the government is unwilling to provide a balanced foreign policy in the Middle East. The Green Party supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that addresses the security, economic, and religious concerns of both sides.
• The government failed to support a bill to control human rights abuses abroad (Bill C-300). According to testimony at the Foreign Affairs Committee in the fall of 2010, some Canadian mining companies have been implicated in serious human rights and environmental abuses.
• The government rejected efforts to repatriate Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik, stranded and facing torture in Sudan for six years. His return was finally forced by the courts.

In 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern over Canada’s human rights record.  Most recently, Canada has been indifferent to events in Libya. The only person to defect from the Gaddafi regime has not been provided security and has been harassed by his embassy, while those loyal to Gaddafi are yet to be expelled from Canada. The Green Party was the first to suggest action be taken on the diplomatic front with its press release on February 22 when we urged the Government to request the United Nations to take steps to remove Libya from the Human Rights Council.

“It is time for a change in government to protect human rights for citizens in Canada and abroad and to rebuild Canada’s role internationally as a human rights leader,” stated Joe Foster, Green Party Human Rights Critic. “If you check our record, you will see that the Green Party has consistently spoken out for protecting human rights in Canada and abroad. This is one of many reason to vote Green,” Foster added.

Wednesday, 2011 April 6, 7 pm to 9 pm
Sandford Fleming Building, room 1101
10 King’s College Road, University of Toronto

Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu, Green Party candidate for Toronto-Danforth, will be speaking at the event. Adriana will explain how the Green Party will act to defend democracy and human rights, and our response to the pledge document circulated by the Voices-Voix coalition at the beginning of the election campaign.     Read more »

Here’s today’s press release from the Green Party of Canada regarding the coup in Honduras:     Read more »

I’ve had a couple of people ask what Green Party policy was on disabilities.  One concern was that some of the policies towards greening the economy were fairly hostile to people who had a difficult time already dealing with life’s challenges.  This is something I’ve pledged to address on Shadow Cabinet.

In the meantime, I’m proud also to say that the Green Party has a very robust and human-scale policy towards people with disabilities centred on two policy points which I find incredibly important.     Read more »

In late March 1964, my parents went to visit the newly unveiled Brazilian capital of Brasilia.  My mom, pregnant with me, returned to Uberlândia, where my father’s family lived, to their great relief.  Brazil had just suffered the military overthrow of their elected government, and my mom and dad, seeing the sights in the capital city, hadn’t even noticed.

Like the recent military coup in Honduras, Brazil’s coup was bloodless.  But it ushered in twenty years of political repression, journalistic censorship, disappearances, a pattern of torture, and even amid a time of burgeoning economic growth known as the “Brazilian miracle”, a rise in infant mortality, the collapse of the education system and the polarization of society into a small group of ultra-rich and a huge class of desperately poor.  The Brazil that I came to know as a teenager was a Brazil teeming with urban poor clustered in shantytowns of unimaginable squalor.     Read more »