Michael Swan

Canadian senate latest to call for action on poverty

December 18, 2009

A behemoth, 300-page report with 78 recommendations, the result of two years study and testimony from more than 175 witnesses, has anti-poverty activists hoping Canadians may start thinking and talking about poverty and how to solve it. In From the Margins: A Call to Action on Poverty, Housing and Homelessness was tabled in the Senate Dec. 8. The government will have 150 days to respond to its findings and recommendations once Senators finish commenting on it in January.

KAIROS reapplies for CIDA funding

December 18, 2009

KAIROS is willing to reapply for Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funding, but the ecumenical justice organization wants to know the new ground rules. “We’ve already spent six months on this proposal and discussions around this proposal, understanding that this was an excellent proposal and we got an excellent evaluation right in the middle of our work,” said KAIROS executive director Mary Corkery. At a brief meeting with CIDA Minister Bev Oda, KAIROS “didn’t learn very much,” Corkery said.

Toronto nativity scene plaque honouring pro-life hero caught up in politics

December 17, 2009

TORONTO - Activists with Campaign Life Coalition were shocked to find themselves accused of playing pro-life politics with Christmas. All they wanted to do was honour an aging, beloved priest, said the head of Campaign Life’s Gethsemene Ministries. “I was quite surprised,” Suresh Dominic told The Catholic Register. After written complaints reached Mayor David Miller’s office, city officials asked Dominic to remove a sign from the back of the creche display in front of Old City Hall. The sign on a laminated 8X11 sheet of paper said the statues in the scene had been anonymously donated in honour of “pro-life hero Fr. Ted Colleton.”

Red tape cut on generic AIDS drugs

December 11, 2009

Adding Canadian-made generic drugs to the mix of affordable HIV and AIDS treatments could be good news for Africa, but it’s probably not enough to make a serious dent in the disease which kills more than two million people each year, says a Canadian Jesuit who works on AIDS in Africa. “If Canadian sources are going to provide second-line generics at an affordable price — something few or no others are doing — it would be a reason for hope in Africa,” Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, executive director of the African Jesuit AIDS Network , told The Catholic Register in an e-mail, adding, however, that “Universal access to antiretrovirals (ARVs) is still a distant dream.”

Morally, Canada is complicit if Afghan detainees tortured

December 10, 2009

TORONTO - Whether Canadian officials in Afghanistan knew that Afghan detainees would be tortured once handed over to the Afghan army, or merely suspected that they might be, Canadians may have involved themselves in the intrinsic evil of torture, according to Catholic theologians. Government denials which claim Canadians had no concrete evidence of specific cases of Canadian detainees being tortured don’t absolve Canadian officials of moral complicity in torture, said Lee Cormie, professor of Christian ethics at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College.

Peace activist sees hope for Iraqi Christians

December 10, 2009

TORONTO - An Iraqi peace campaigner, on tour after receiving a Canadian human rights award, claims Christian Iraqi refugees — most of them stuck in Syria and Jordan — could safely return home to live in peace in Iraq. “Let’s be honest. To get accepted here as a refugee, I have to talk about violence,” Ibrahim Ismaeel, chair of the board of directors of the Iraqi non-violence network La’Onf , told The Catholic Register.

Development agencies fear the CIDA chop

December 10, 2009

The axe that landed on KAIROS , ending 35 years of Canadian International Development Agency funding, has left Canada’s Catholic development organization and others wondering, who’s next? “It gives all organizations in the development community... pause right now to wonder what’s going on,” said Michael Casey, executive director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

The Priests used music during the Irish Troubles as a unifying force

December 8, 2009

TORONTO - When Fr. Eugene O’Hagen was a student at St. MacNissi’s College in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, one of his school friends used to dress up in an IRA uniform for parties and sing The Men Behind the Wire. “It was his party piece,” O’Hagen explained on a recent visit to Toronto to promote The Priests’ latest CD, Harmony. The song begins:

Finding shelter at St. Clare Inn

December 4, 2009

TORONTO - What are the chances an illiterate, alcoholic, drug addicted, bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic woman is going to pull it together, learn to read, hold down a job, stay on her medications and begin a mini-career as a stand-up comedian? Linda Chamberlain is that woman, and at 60 she looks back at her 25 years of fear, despair and homelessness with disbelief. She also knows precisely what saved her life.

Conservatives show weakened resolve on death penalty

December 4, 2009

TORONTO - Heavy condemnation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government for its pick-and-choose approach to protecting Canadians facing the death penalty abroad came up repeatedly during the third annual Cities for Life protest in Toronto. “We now have, for the first time in more than 50 years, a Prime Minister and a government who support the death penalty, who believe in the death penalty,” said James Lockyer, director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted .