On October 26, West Coast LEAF will celebrate Persons Day in Nanaimo with a special breakfast featuring constitutional expert Kasari Govender. Govender will be speaking on the intersections of legal aid and women’s equality.
In light of the recent news about a potential temporary closure of legal aid, access to justice is once again in the spotlight. Massive cuts to legal aid starting in 2002 have left BC’s legal system in crisis, with no poverty law and very little family law legal aid. “As the primary users of family law services, women are most impacted by the cuts to legal aid,” says Govender. “Our foremothers worked to ensure that rights for women would be enshrined in law, but unfortunately these hard-won legal rights have little meaning without the means to enforce them.” (more…)
A new supportive housing project on Uplands Drive is underway and received a sunny kickoff from officials on site Wednesday.
Demonstrations were held across the country Thursday July 25, 2013 as a growing chorus of Canadians urged the federal government to release documents related to nutritional experiments done on aboriginal children decades ago. The protests, which varied in size, were sparked by a report published earlier in the month that said 1,300 children in northern Manitoba and at six residential schools across Canada were deprived of food and used as subjects to test the effects of minerals and vitamins in the 1940s and 1950s. [
A first-of-its kind study has analyzed the conflict-of-interest policies at the 17 medical schools across Canada. 