MuchMusic airs a popular prank TV show created by Hallock Healey Entertainment called Scare Tactics. The pranks are, for the most part, harmless. But a while ago, OneChild happened to see an episode of this show entitled Human Auction.

A young woman was tricked by a friend into thinking she was being trafficked, sold into sex slavery!

You can view the episode here: HTTP://YOUTU.BE/K2KH4GCQAIQ

What’s actually scary about this episode is that Bell Media, the owner of the two channels, thinks that this kind of program makes for good entertainment! The episode was sickeningly offensive and insensitive, using an atrocious human rights violation affecting millions of children, women, and men across the world as a gimmick to get some cheap laughs.

After seeing the episode, we quickly mobilized a small group of young people to send messages using the twitter hashtag #humantraffickingshouldneverbeapunchline to Bell Media, declaring that the youth of Canada do not appreciate human trafficking and sexual slavery being turned into an entertainment punch line.

The good news is that your efforts managed to get them to pull the episode.

The bad news is that that isn’t enough. Bell pulled the episode, but they declined our request to proactively address human trafficking as an issue in Canada. In fact, they declined to even just acknowledge that human trafficking is bad! A Bell representative we spoke to said that pulling the episode was “good enough.”

What about the people who have seen the episode already? A quick look through the Youtube comments shows that the vast majority of viewers not only don’t care about human trafficking, but think that sexual slavery is really funny, and that the pranked victim – and sometimes even all victims – deserve it.

Even worse, what if a person who actually was trafficked/is being trafficked had seen the episode? How must they feel knowing Canadian youth are laughing about the misery they endure, laughing at the rape and the torture?

Bell media told us that MuchMusic “lends its voice to raise awareness about important issues relevant to our audience,” and yet they’re choosing to remain silent about an issue that affects us: human trafficking of children, women, and men.

OneChild feels that MuchMusic is in the unique position to influence hundreds of thousands of Canadian youth, and lead the way into a future where human trafficking is taken seriously in Canada.

What scares us is the possibility of Bell Media quietly sweeping this under the rug, but Bell Media has stated that they care what their viewers say. This means YOU have the power to make a Canadian telecom giant stand up and tell the entire country that human trafficking is a terrible crime, and should never be a punch line.

The THINK BEFORE YOU PRANK campaign is your opportunity to stand up and shout out for the invisible victims of human trafficking. This is your chance to change how Canadians understand human trafficking.

This is your chance to demand justice for the voiceless and the vulnerable.

Sign the petition at HTTP://WWW.CHANGE.ORG/EN-CA/PETITIONS/THINK-BEFORE-YOU-PRANK.

Reblogged from Fatal Sincerity: News & Culture:

They also provided a video of the photo shoots. I have yet to see at least several half-naked men in this shoot.

What ever happened to parents-to-be saying, “We don’t care whether it’s a boy or a girl, as long as it’s healthy?”

According to a new Gallup poll – they do care — and if they could only have one child, Americans would rather have a boy.

The poll of 1,020 men and women over the age of 18 found that 40 percent preferred a boy to the 28 percent who said a girl, with the rest having no opinion on the matter.

In fact, Americans have repeatedly said they’d prefer having a son to a daughter in each of the 10 surveys Gallup has conducted since 1941.

What is going on here?

The study found that men drive the desire to have boys, with 49 percent preferring male babies, whereas the percent of women preferring boys nearly equaled the percent wanting girls.

Preferences also have something to do with age. For the 30 and under crowd, a whopping 54 percent would rather have a boy, while only 27 percent wanted a girl. Past 50, the percent preferring girls goes up to 29, and preference for boys decreases to 31 percent. 32 percent of women over 50 actually preferred a girl, compared to the 25 percent of the same demographic who said they would rather have a boy.

And if you want to get political about it, the preference for a boy is higher among Republicans than Democrats, which makes sense in light of the gender divide in politics: As Gallup notes, American men are more likely to be Republican, and women are more likely to be Democrats.

What’s chilling about this data is that it echoes the preference for boys in other cultures where parents take extreme measures to ensure that they will raise boys, from abandoning female children to girl infanticide. While there’s no evidence of Americans pursuing their preferences to that extreme, some do use embryo screening, legal in the United States but illegal in many other parts of the world, to choose the sex of their child. It would be interesting the next time around for Gallup to poll how many parents would use that technology to ensure a child of the desired sex.

The author starts off by stating what is happening next week when the European Union is planning on a vote to ban all pornography in the media and they are very upset at this, as you can tell.

Early next week, the European Union Parliament is planning to vote on a resolution calling for a sweeping ban on pornography in the name of gender equality. If it passed, the resolution could be the first step towards a continent-wide ban on pornography on a wide swath of media. But, good intentions aside, that would actually be a bad move for both Europe’s women and the EU’s commitment to free speech.

The Parliament vote scheduled for next week would recommend this resolution on gender equality (which includes the porn ban) to the EU Commission, which would then turn it into legislation which would then, finally, be enacted into binding law by the Parliament. As Wired UK notes, the Commission would have the discretion to simply leave out the provision calling for “a ban on all forms of pornography in the media” — which could well cover all online pornography — in the final law.

I find it incredibly odd that they would call this action a “bad move” for free speech when just several weeks ago, they were celebrating the bankruptcy of Girls Gone Wild. Oops. Did somebody perform a hypocritical act and not realize they were doing it? Did they just say that the exploitation of women is “free speech” and yet they were shouting to the heavens about how awful a PORN company is to young girls? I think that ThinkProgress just did! What they don’t seem to realize is that abusing women through filmed rape is not “free speech.” I am quite certain that the Human Rights bill did not state that pornography was “free speech.” I must not be very fluent in white-dude speak.

They continue their little spiel about the poor state of Europe’s “free speech” by stating that lab tests for sexual aggression in men after watching pornography “is not real world evidence.” That argument could be used in any context regarding media. They seem to conveniently forget that the test subjects were actual men, men who WATCHED the pornography and responded to it. These men did not just appear out of thin air or were in the imagination of these scientists that performed the study. I guess it could be said for scientists that try to prove that pornography DOES not influence behavior by only talking to men who claim not to be influenced by porn in any way, shape, or form. What those scientists would totally miss is the men who have quit pornography and are better people because of it. Though quitting anything that is addictive is a difficult task and the addict will relapse on the substance they are addicted to; it is very worthwhile and that addict will become a healthy person as a result of quitting. The author of this article does not seem to want to believe it, unfortunately.

But if the ban were to make it into the final law, it would likely do more harm than good. Though a few studies have found that, under laboratory conditions, porn makes men more sexually aggressive, there’s no real-world evidence bearing out the claim that this translates into sexist attitudes or sexual violence. According to Professor Milton Diamond, director of the Pacific Center for Sex and Society at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, “[t]here’s absolutely no evidence that pornography does anything negative.”

Money and boners is what is being defended here, above all else. We must think of the boners. We must make ridiculous studies that have no evidence to back up their claims otherwise our capitalist patriarchy will crumble on our heads! It doesn’t matter that we may screw around with the evidence or mess around with facts or that our test subjects may LIE about it. Let’s ignore all of those! Let’s do studies that will solidify our bias no matter how damaging that bias may be! Sure, let’s all believe that a degrading media does not influence perceptions of human behavior and how they interact with other humans (AKA women) or how they view their sexuality. Let us all ignore, for example, how those early Disney cartoons were portraying Nazis as Socialists when they clearly were not.

Why do I bring Disney up, I hear you ask? Because Disney and pornography are staples in our culture. They are the things that created our popular culture and how we view each other. Sure, the young kids that watched those cartoons probably grew up and realized that foxes do not talk to hounds or that mice do not know how to sew but some of the messages that were in those cartoons and movies stay with you even after you hit puberty. We either internalize the messages that they sent us or we don’t internalize these messages and we do something about it! THAT is media. Media has a message and pornography is a form of media with a negative message towards women AND men, but mostly focused on women with the agenda of normalizing dehumanization and degradation. No, your PERSONAL experiences with pornography do not automatically debunk the collective experiences of women that faced horrors from pornography whether they participated in the film or that their partner viewed these films.

Beauchamp continues his descent into a horrifying train-wreck of an article by quoting an empirical study. See that the phrase empirical study is in italics? That must mean that this study should be taken very seriously even though the shit from it could be smelt from a mile away but it is empirical evidence. When men use fancy font in their articles, it means that they are intelligent primates. So, it must mean that it carries no bias.

There is, however, empirical evidence that it reduces the incidence of sexual violence. One 2007 study by Todd Kendall compared the rates of crime between U.S. states with greater and lesser access to the internet. After controlling for other crime-inducing variables (like rates of urbanization and alcoholism), Kendall found that more internet access led to lower rates of two crimes only — rape and prostitution:

I find that internet access appears to be a substitute for rape; in particular, the results suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in internet access is associated with a decline in reported rape victimization of around 7.3%…internet has no apparent substitution effect on any of 25 other measured crimes, with the exception of the only other well-defined sex crime, prostitution. Moreover, I show that the effect on rape is concentrated among states with the highest male-to-female ratios, and that by age, the effect on rape is concentrated among teenage men, who are the prime consumers of pornography, and for whom the internet induced the largest change in availability.

Pardon me, Beauchamp but are you forgetting something? Of course, Sweden, for example, has a high percentage of rape along with the lowest percentage of prostitution in the world of course, women in Sweden are more likely to report rape then North American women but because there is a low percentage of rape reports in a certain country that does not mean that rape never happens in that particular country; universally, rape remains one of the most under-reported and under-prosecuted crimes, violent or otherwise. Nor does it mean that pornography, somehow, in some postmodern sense, makes men not rape women, had something to do with it. Has it ever occurred to you that women are shamed into not reporting their rapist? Have you seen the low conviction rate for rapists compared to drug smugglers or child murderers? Or even the type of sentences that rapists receive compared to the aforementioned? And North America, one of the biggest consumers of pornography right next to China also have very high percentages of rape as well. How did you or the researcher you cited, come to this conclusion? That pornography had something to do with the lowering of rape or prostitution? Correlation does not always equal causation. Understand?

Beauchamp then continues with his assertion that pornography lowers rape statistics by magic. But of course, if the statistics I provided in the links does not convince him that rape is definitely a HUGE problem in North America then I can safely say that he does not listen to women or even know the ACTUAL goals of feminism are not to please his sacred penis.

Two other studies support Kendall’s finding — one correlating the international spread of the internet with a concomitantly international decline in sexual violence, the other presenting survey evidence that, as Scientific American puts it, “patients requesting treatment in clinics for sex offenders commonly say that pornography helps them keep their abnormal sexuality within the confines of their imagination.”

Moreover, pornography bans defeat feminist aims in a more direct way: they result in restrictions on feminist and pro-LGBT speech. Since pornography is notoriously hard to define, laws generally ban “violent” or “degrading” depictions of sexual activity. However, such terms mean different things to different people: feminist literature often contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault, and, to a right-wing evangelical, same-sex sexual activity is intrinsically degrading.

Excuse me, who let this man be the spokesperson for Feminist discourse or theory? Who in the bloody hell said that pornography was “feminist speech”? No feminist that I know of except liberal feminists but everyone knows just how “inclusive” they are when it comes to multiple oppressions of women, correct? And pornography is “notoriously hard to define”? Have you read a dictionary? Do you know what it says? Or even the origin of the word “pornography”? I will give you a brief reminder in case you forgot.

Greek pornographos, adjective, writing about prostitutes, from pornē prostitute + graphein to write; akin to Greekpernanai to sell, poros journey Definition here

So, in case you don’t know how to read. Pornography IS THE WRITING OF PROSTITUTES! Which the majority of them are WOMEN! No one said that “same-sex acts” are degrading or “pornographic” either. Just because you, a white male, may not deem pornography as violent doesn’t mean that every woman in the world is free from the violence in pornography or that it never happens. I am also certain there is a difference between EROTICA and PORNOGRAPHY. Pornography is not “feminist free speech”. It is a product, made of the exploitation and degradation of women, for men to consume. It is made of women NOT being themselves. It is something derived FROM women, from the use of their bodies, constructed from men’s desires to see women dehumanized. At least, at its very best, that is what it is. I also cannot fucking believe that you even compared feminist writers that contains “graphic depictions of sexual violence”  to pornography even though the point of those depictions is NOT to get dudes rocks off but to make them understand how horrifying violence against women is!  You also forget that the highest percentage of porn consumers are men! How insulting this is, to the intelligence of your readers, those who follow you regularly as well as those who put themselves through this on the first and last occasion.

Beauchamp finishes off his awful article by quoting Nadine Strossen of the ACLU. Wait. Isn’t ACLU the organization that defended the Westboro Baptist Church’s hate speech towards the LGBT community? And did they also defend the Ku Klux Klan? Why, yes! And you thought that using the ACLU would save you from feminists calling you on your bullshit, did you? You honestly thought that an organization like American Civil Liberties Union, which defended HATE SPEECH could back your bullshit argument about the legal definition of pornography? How absolutely hilarious!

As Nadine Strosser of the ACLU notes, this sort of vague law has long been used, historically speaking, to clamp down on activists agitating from women’s and LGBT rights on grounds thatthe content of their speech was, in a variety of ways, “degrading.” Indeed, a Canadian Supreme Court ruling (R. v. Butler) allowing for bans on pornography if it “predisposes persons to act in an anti-social manner” did not actually restrict “violent, misogynistic heterosexual materials” — but rather access to feminist and pro-gay writing, forcing the lead group whose briefs were cited by the Court’s ruling to “unanimously [condemn] the use of the Butler decision to justify the discriminatory use of law to harass and intimidate lesbians and gays and sex trade workers…[the ruling has been exploited] to harass bookstores, artists, and AIDS organizations, sex trade workers, and safe sex educators.”

Pornography crackdowns also tend to spillover more broadly, restricting free speech more broadly and stifling the real tech innovations (often of use to, say, Middle Eastern revolutionaries) created by online porn.

I am very certain that those “innovations” would have existed even without pornography, Beauchamp. And may I remind you not to bring revolutionaries into this! I am pretty sure they would be insulted by the mere mention of your defense of pornography by using them. Insensitivity much? And have you heard of the recent case of the cannibal cop? Apparently, he watched cannibal porn and chatted with his fellow freaks online about how he PLANNED to MURDER his wife? Was he exercising his free speech too? By sexualizing the hypothetical murder of his wife? A murder of which HE WAS PLANNING TO DO?  According to this article here, it states that “Valle, 28, has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping conspiracy and with misusing a national database to learn personal information about potential targets.” Even though there is evidence that he actually did those things and are you going to sit there and claim that pornography actually stops men from performing violent acts against women? How do you sleep at night, knowing that you say and believe the things you say?

There is ignorance and then there is absolute blind ignorance AND hatred of women. Beauchamp demonstrates his hatred of women without even so much as realizing as he does. Protecting the hate speech of women does not make you “progressive” or “pro-woman”, it makes you a vile hateful monster. It does not matter how a white male feels about pornography, what SHOULD matter is that women are severely abused and raped while working in the porn industry. The women who leave the industry and tell their stories about the abuse they endured while working there are important components in dismantling patriarchy. They would agree that the abuse and degradation of women is not “free speech.” It is hate speech. Plain and simple.

Now, before any male reader accuses me of being a man-hater or “having issues” with male sexuality; it is not the existence of male sexuality that is the problem. It is the fact that men feel so entitled to display their sexual thoughts everywhere, especially on a public website like Youtube, as if anyone would pat them on the back or even care about their sexual fetishes. Comments like this exist on Youtube, on the street, at workplaces. Anywhere that women exist, there will definitely be unnecessary, unsolicited, unwanted comments about the woman’s attractiveness and what the man would do to that woman. Another problem these comments indicate is that the male commentor, in his expanded sense of entitlement, implies that the female vocalists would show even little interest in him enough to want to have sex with him and that consent would and should not be a factor in how he wants to please his desires. This should be considered common sense to not say disgusting things to a stranger but when it is women; any advice about manners or respect is ignored and all Hell is let loose.

I am very certain that Angela Gossow, Otep Shamaya and many other vocalists hear comments like this all the time. I am also very certain that they could give less a shit about how attractive that particular man finds them. They might even be disturbed by all the virtual, and probably actual dick-wagging he is doing on their videos but would that cross his mind at all? Of course, none of the women will say anything about it because they learned long ago that bringing up and calling out sexism or male entitlement is a waste of time, especially in a public (male) environment. Better to just ignore, and let the annoyed and less creepy fans deal with the creepy fucks.

We are supposedly living in a time where this is superfically seen as not okay, not how it should be. Women, we are told, have made strides in the society. The truth is that the men who make these comments are REAL LIFE people who have families (or lack thereof), a job, a car, and a house. These men are someone’s son, grandson, nephew, cousin or brother. These men are in our society, they are in some woman’s home, they walk around without any fear circling their every thought. They do not worry about repercussions for their thoughts and actions and if they screw up they are forgiven almost immediately without even being expected to apologize. They do not even worry about sexual harassment or someone making a comment about how that person would like to give a blowjob to them. Women fear this type of harassment everyday. Hell, they even expect it to happen.

No woman in any time asks for superficial comments about their appearance especially when they are working very hard to be taken seriously in a male dominated field. Compliments are nice but that should be left at “hey, nice shirt” or “hey, cool book” without descending into details about how that man would like to fuck that woman. Hell, that woman might not want to talk to you and that is fine. She does not owe you her time or attention; she probably just wants to get to work without any hassle. The women I just mentioned earlier also want the same thing; they just want to go to work without any harassment from men. This may be beyond the imagination of the men who make these comments and think that they will get away with it but they should try to keep up. Especially since some of these women that are metal vocalists have probably dealt with sexual abuse and rape. The same with any female musician. The last thing they would want is some asshole on their video talking about how they would want to fuck them.

To simply say “it’s the internet” would be simply removing all responsibility from the commentor and removing the effect of the comment. There is nothing wrong with thinking that the woman you admire is beautiful but don’t expect that woman to take your comment without suspicion. Don’t respond as if you sincerely believe your comment, and even the thoughts behind it, and the potential behaviors expressed in it, exist in a vacuum. The woman you want is a human being. Don’t think that the woman you admire hasn’t been through a traumatic experience with abusive men. Don’t expect her to trust you right away. EARN her trust. Work hard to keep her trust.

Because nothing cures the sexual assault of employees like sexually exploiting women!

An investigation was launched today after a care home admitted inviting in prostitutes to offer sexual services to disabled residents.

The street workers regularly meet with vulnerable guests for sex sessions – known in the home as a ”special visit”.

Staff have been ordering the prostitutes by phone who then visit disabled residents at Chaseley, a nursing home caring for 55 people in Eastbourne, Sussex.

Sex workers meet residents in a special room and a red sock is put on the door handle so staff know not to disturb them.

Bosses say many physically and mentally disabled people have no other sexual outlet – and become so frustrated they often resort to groping staff.

Care workers say the ”sex surrogates” are ”therapeutic” and experts claim they are a ”basic human right”.

But East Sussex County Council has launched an urgent investigation into possible ”exploitation and abuse” of vulnerable people.

Sue Wyatt, Chaseley’s manager, has confirmed prostitutes are welcomed at the home but say staff no longer make the calls ordering them directly.

She said a ”third party consultant” was now used to contact the sex workers – and says the disabled guests ”have needs” which the hookers help meet.

Mrs Wyatt said: ”People have needs, so sometimes we might need to be set up a room in a certain way. We are there to help.

”We use a private consultant who arranges everything. They are an independent person who works in the home. She puts people in touch with people.

”We respect our residents as individuals so that’s why we help this to happen.”

The practice at the home was revealed by its former manager Helena Barrow.

She said: ”The fact is, sex workers are allowed by law to sexually enable people but care workers are not.

”So, if someone asked, we would often call in a professional, someone trained to do that. It’s known as the resident’s ‘special visit’.

”If you have a resident who is groping staff, one way of resolving that problem is to get a sex worker in who is trained to deal with that situation.

”But most of the time, these are people who feel frustrated by a primeval need they cannot fulfil.

”So we would help them with the phone, dial the number, or use the computer to contact someone who could help.

”If we refused, we would not be delivering a holistic level of care.”

Mrs Barrow, who now manages another care home in St Leonards, Sussex, insisted residents always paid for the call girls themselves.

She said staff at her former workplace would often telephone sex workers and invite them to the home.

Staff would dial the number and hold the phone to the disabled person’s ear so they could make the call themselves.

She said the calls were welcomed into the building and escorted by a member of staff to a room where a resident was waiting.

Staff would then put a ”special red sock” on the door handle to make sure the couple were not disturbed before checking on them every 15 minutes.

On one occasion, local strippers were invited into the home to perform a ”special show” for residents.

Chaseley is an ex-military nursing home which now houses a mix of residents whose places are funded by private arrangements or by social services.

A spokesman for East Sussex County Council said the local authority had been unaware of Chaseley’s policy of inviting prostitutes on site and ”did not welcome” the idea.

He said: ”We will examine our concerns through the Pan-Sussex Multi-Agency Policy and Procedures for Safeguarding Adults at Risk.

”This has the potential to place vulnerable East Sussex residents at risk of exploitation and abuse.”

But other senior health workers welcomed Chaseley’s decision to actively help its residents have sex.

Denise Banks is director of social care provision at Chailey Heritage Foundation which has been working with the Sexual Health and Disability Allliance, a national group that campaigns for disabled people to be allowed access to sex workers.

She revealed the foundation had contacted Chaseley to help develop a policy where prostitutes could be found for residents if needed.

Mrs Banks said: ”The work they [Chaseley] are doing is certainly pleasing.

”If someone asked us to contact a sex worker for them, we would have to be open to that. If we resisted we would be going against the Human Rights Act.

”We would try to facilitate that somewhere else to protect that individual’s privacy and dignity. It’s a much nicer way to do it. But we need to develop a proper policy.

”We do have to be very careful because when you are working with very vulnerable people you have to make sure they are not being pushed in a certain direction.

”It’s really down to an individual approach. We want to allow people to express their sexuality. It’s completely within the law but of course there has to be boundaries.”

Dr Tuppy Owens, convenor of the Sexual Health and Disability Allliance, said: ”Many disabled people are living in perpetual frustration.

”If someone wants to access a sex worker and they can’t make the phone call then they should be allowed to do that. There’s nothing illegal about it.

”What’s illegal is for disabled people to be denied their human rights.”

But other experts raised health and safety fears around allowing vulnerable people access to sex workers without proper checks.

Nick Tapp, chief executive of East Sussex Disability Association, said he thought it posed ”certain problems”.

He said: ”Allowing them release in this way would appear to be a good thing.

”However, there’s always an issue of risk which is for local authorities and health authorities to look into.

”How do you know the sex workers are not carrying infections? There are certainly safety issues there.”

The Care Quality Commission (CQC), the care watchdog, refused to reveal whether it was aware of prostitutes being invited into care homes.

A CQC spokeswoman said: ”Where an individual care need is identified, we expect care plans to reflect that, and for all the appropriate safeguards to be in place to ensure that the individual concerned and others potentially affected are protected against the risk of abuse.”

The practice of ”sex surrogacy”’ is currently in the spotlight following the release of a new Hollywood film, The Sessions.

It confronts the sexual needs of the disabled and the controversial role sometimes played by surrogates in order to fulfil them.

Article Here

PSAC wants Bill C-45 opened up to public debate

Once again, the Conservative government is pushing through hundreds of pages of major legislative changes without consulting Canadians.

PSAC has major concerns with the latest budget implementation bill, C-45. Our concerns echo the criticism being expressed by the opposition parties, environmental, scientific and Aboriginal groups. We join the call for Bill C-45 to be split into parts and debated separately.

Many of these legislative changes will have a drastic impact on Canadians and should not be rushed through Parliament without time for careful consideration, public scrutiny and debate.

Canada Grain Act

Bill C-45 contains amendments to the Canada Grain Act that will remove regulations that protect independent grain producers, increase self regulation, and decrease inspections.

The changes will also jeopardize the quality of Canada’s internal and external grain supply by removing the requirement for inward inspection – a process put in place to ensure producers are paid for the quality and quantity of their grain and not cheated by international grain companies.

These amendments threaten the livelihood of independent producers while further protecting the rights of the global conglomerates. For more information on these changes, see the submission made by the union to the government.

CRA Act

The Canada Revenue Agency was created in 1999 as a separate, independent employer from Treasury Board. Over time, the CRA and the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE) have worked hard to develop a harmonious working relationship, allowing the negotiation of two consecutive collective agreements before the expiry date of the previous agreement.

Changes, to the Canada Revenue Agency Act will put the CRA back under the authority of Treasury Board who will oversee CRA’s negotiating mandate as well as certain terms and conditions of employment.  This change contradicts the specific reasons why the CRA was created and approved by Parliament – a better way of doing business for Canadians and creating a more beneficial labour relationship. The union will be contacting the government and the opposition parties to demonstrate their opposition to these changes.

Fisheries Act

New changes to the Fisheries Act build on changes in the spring omnibus legislation which further undermines Canada’s ecology and removes legal barriers to oil, pipeline and other developers. Four former fisheries ministers as well as countless scientists have publicly opposed these amendments.  Currently resource developers have to receive authorization under the Act when their projects damage lakes, rivers or other fish habitat. They must also specify the corrective action. Under these new changes, the developer will no longer be responsible for fixing the environmental and habitat damage they cause. 

Indian Act

The amendments to the Indian Act are clearly designed to give the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs access over First Nations’ lands and undue influence on vulnerable communities. The key amendment to the Act gives the government authority to determine the surrender of any portion of any First Nation territory at any given time.

This clause is in direct contravention of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which calls for the “free, prior and informed consent” of all Indigenous peoples exercising their right of self-determination.

The Navigable Waters Protection Act

The Navigable Waters Protection Act will be amended to reduce its scope to less than one percent of Canadian waters. The new law will restrict federal oversight to the three oceans that border Canada and to a mere 97 lakes and 62 rivers.

The traditional territories of Aboriginal peoples’ will be at the greatest risk of environmental exploitation as the law was designed to provide quick development access to resource extraction industries, a great number of which operate on First Nations’ land.

Public Sector pensions

Unilateral amendments to public sector pension plans include increasing the normal retirement age from 60 to 65 for new hires beginning in 2013. PSAC opposes this billbecause it is an attack on younger generations who make up the majority of new hires in the public service.

The increase in the retirement age will generate a two tier system, creating inequities between young and older workers in the public service, forcing younger workers to retire at an older age. The public service pension plan is sustainable and there is no reason to penalize young workers.

PSAC calls on the government to focus on strengthening pensions for all Canadians instead of weakening pension plans and retirement security for Canadians dedicated to public service.

See also: PSAC criticism of the Budget Implementation Act: Bill C-38.

What role does music play in your life?

Is a question like that very simple to answer? No, it’s not. As you can see from my Thirty Day Song Challenge last year. So, all of my readers at least have some idea of what music I listen to. They also the role of which song played during my life when I needed a stress reliever or someone who can relate to my experiences.

When I am feeling disillusioned with the world and humanity Nine Inch Nails was there.

Otep is there to help me express my female rage and Tori Amos was and is still like the cool, understanding mother-figure I wished I had.