Thursday 21 July 2011

Contemptuous Cuts

Funny priorities those Cons have.

Over at Jason Kenney's ministry For Keeping Heathens And Scary Dusky-Skinned Folks Out Of Canada, approximately 1,000,000 applications for residency are stuck in backlog limbo. But MinJKenney is queening around the country, claiming the backlog was caused by the Liberals - or implicitely, civil servants working inefficiently under Lib government, but who are now up to speed in spite of staff cuts because the Cons are better taskmasters.


Thus Diane Finley follows suit, using her ministry to slash programs that benefit Dusky-Skinned Folks In Canada Who Aren't Dead Yet, also known as Aboriginal and First Nations citizens.
[...] Human Resources and Skills Development [has cut] $490,000 [in funding] to Wapikoni Mobile.

Over the past seven years, this non-profit organization has included the participation of over 2,000 aboriginal youth in 19 communities in Quebec and has helped them to produce over 600 films and musical productions. These productions have been seen all over the world and the producers have been awarded 40 national and international awards for their work.
From here.

So far nothing has appeared in the press or media in the rest of Canada. Le Devoir has been on the story and Radio-Canada has interviewed Manon Barbeau, the force behind this brilliant and successful program.
For the last eight years, an exceptional and pioneering media experience has given new means of expression and a sense of hope to aboriginal youth on reserves in Quebec.

The Wapikonimobile is a mobile video production unit – or rather three of them – travelling from community to community, providing video training and supervising the making of short films. For youngsters confronted with substance abuse, an epidemic of suicides and an almost complete lack of job prospects, this was an extraordinary opportunity, and they took advantage of it. Some 2000 of them learned production skills, and made some 450 films expressing their own realities. Some of those films had real cinematic qualities and were shown in festivals here and abroad.

But now, the federal Department of Human Resources has cancelled its half-million dollar grant, about half of the Wapikonimobile’s total budget– at a time when the production units should already have been on the road. Young people in numerous communities who have been looking forward to this experience for a whole year now find themselves without anything to do for the summer and without the means for expressing themselves. For what reason? Because, according to the minister, other projects offer better prospects for creating jobs and teaching skills.

Quebec’s excellent daily Le Devoir, which broke the Wapikonimobile story yesterday, has another story today (July 19th) revealing that the arts and the community and aboriginal sectors are hard hit by other little publicized Human Resources cutbacks as well. This is surely a sign of where things are going under the majority conservative government.
From
here.

Write to Contempt Party Minister Diane Finley. Keep it polite. Be supportive of the program. Explain why you want your tax money to support Wapikoni Mobile and ^NOT the distribution of bibles to schools on reserves.

Oh. Wait. Perhaps you shouldn't mention that last bit. It may not be strategic.

Grand merci to Karyn who located source material in English.

4 comments:

Niles said...

And that with the paint still fresh on Harper's face. Harper surely is deserving of the chief honours given him this last month. He can't *wait* to find new and better ways to serve the Aboriginal communities everything he thinks they should have.

I wonder what we'll hear out of APTN. I wonder how intensely any funding the station receives is being scrutinized so it can be defunded ala CBC and Planned Parenthood. They've proven apt heirs of the late, great age of investigative journalism.

Beijing York said...

That Wapikoni Mobile program was excellent. I looked into it when looking for best practices in youth focused training and development programming.

As for Kenney's Ministry of Hatred for the Dusky, they have issued warrants to revoke Canadian citizenship of some 1800 Canadians they investigated. Before this, some 100 or less citizenships were revoked since Confederation. No specific crimes were mentioned other than having submitting false information on their original application.

deBeauxOs said...

The Cons have to justify the sweetheart relationship they've cultivated with the RCMP.

Just think of all the resources that could have been used for processing family reunification applications, diverted towards full-scale investigations of 1800 individuals who allegedly were planning to use their Canadian citizenship for fraudulent reasons.

Why not simply charge the 4 or 5 immigration agents/advisors who represented these people for contravening whatever laws were flouted?

Anonymous said...

Why not simply charge the 4 or 5 immigration agents/advisors who represented these people for contravening whatever laws were flouted?

These Conservatives charging private businessmen? Never.

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