My story for the Reporter this week:
http://www.fims.uwo.ca/olr/Mar1908/SocialJustice.html
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Beware the idles of March
Spending the break at home doesn't mean there isn't a lot to see and do in London and area for kids and families.
THE LONDON FREE PRESS, page B1
Sat. March 8, 2008
By MEGHAN MOLONEY, SPECIAL TO SUN MEDIA
Raise your hand if you've slipped on an icy driveway in the last week.
Keep it raised if your boots have soaked through after stepping in a pile of slush or you've been stuck waiting for a bus that never came.
Now, how many of you are heading south during March break to escape the winter blues?
Congratulations. Your colleagues, classmates and relatives probably hate you right now.
But for anyone sticking around to spend March break at home, don't despair -- there are lots of great ways to relax, get some exercise and learn something new with your family right here in the London area.
Finding ways to keep your kids happy and active doesn't have to break the bank, either. You can skip the pricey day camps and go for inexpensive activities.
An added bonus is that many events don't require you to register ahead of time, so you can be spontaneous with your plans.
One of the major attractions next week is sure to be the Children's Museum. With daily activities such as arts and crafts, scavenger hunts and karaoke, as well as special weekend guests, kids can do something different each day of the week.
"We have some favourites who've come back for another year of fun," said Dawn Miskelly, manager of visitor services and sales.
"Some of them are activities that are here a lot, but with more oomph over March break."
If you'd rather risk the snow and slush to get some fresh air, the London area offers skiing, snowboarding and tubing, as well as public skating in the city.
Been there, done that? There's always the time-honoured March break tradition of the sugar bush. Among the several maple sugar bushes running tours and activities in the area is the Kinsmen Fanshawe Sugar Bush.
Bill Reath, who's worked there for 15 years, recommends wearing warm clothes and a pair of boots you don't mind getting muddy.
"The old fellow who was there when I started there said, 'You can't make syrup until there's mud on the ground.' "
So instead of hiding at home next week, grab a thermos of hot chocolate and some warm, fuzzy socks and hit the town.
MARCH BREAK SURVIVAL GUIDE:
See the Free Press City & Region page for all the activity listings I compiled.
THE LONDON FREE PRESS, page B1
Sat. March 8, 2008
By MEGHAN MOLONEY, SPECIAL TO SUN MEDIA
Raise your hand if you've slipped on an icy driveway in the last week.
Keep it raised if your boots have soaked through after stepping in a pile of slush or you've been stuck waiting for a bus that never came.
Now, how many of you are heading south during March break to escape the winter blues?
Congratulations. Your colleagues, classmates and relatives probably hate you right now.
But for anyone sticking around to spend March break at home, don't despair -- there are lots of great ways to relax, get some exercise and learn something new with your family right here in the London area.
Finding ways to keep your kids happy and active doesn't have to break the bank, either. You can skip the pricey day camps and go for inexpensive activities.
An added bonus is that many events don't require you to register ahead of time, so you can be spontaneous with your plans.
One of the major attractions next week is sure to be the Children's Museum. With daily activities such as arts and crafts, scavenger hunts and karaoke, as well as special weekend guests, kids can do something different each day of the week.
"We have some favourites who've come back for another year of fun," said Dawn Miskelly, manager of visitor services and sales.
"Some of them are activities that are here a lot, but with more oomph over March break."
If you'd rather risk the snow and slush to get some fresh air, the London area offers skiing, snowboarding and tubing, as well as public skating in the city.
Been there, done that? There's always the time-honoured March break tradition of the sugar bush. Among the several maple sugar bushes running tours and activities in the area is the Kinsmen Fanshawe Sugar Bush.
Bill Reath, who's worked there for 15 years, recommends wearing warm clothes and a pair of boots you don't mind getting muddy.
"The old fellow who was there when I started there said, 'You can't make syrup until there's mud on the ground.' "
So instead of hiding at home next week, grab a thermos of hot chocolate and some warm, fuzzy socks and hit the town.
MARCH BREAK SURVIVAL GUIDE:
See the Free Press City & Region page for all the activity listings I compiled.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Better late than never--for this story, at least... for John Tory, not so much.
Five of my classmates and I attended the Ontario PC convention on Feb. 23 in London. We got in with media passes arranged by our political reporting instructor by day / city newspaper editor by night.
The thrill of covering the convention for class was two-fold: not only did we get out of writing the following week's assignment on the yawn-a-thon federal budget, but we also got to witness the infamous speech by John "Please Don't Fire Me" Tory. Can you stand the excitement?
Anyway, with the number of articles printed about this in the week after the convention, this story will seem a bit outdated at this point but I'm only getting around to posting it now. Chalk it up to the 18 other assignments I'm already working on for the next few weeks, multiply that by job applications, and subtract the energy I lost by randomly getting sick a few days ago.
********
In the upstairs hallway of the London Convention Centre, just before John Tory’s speech at last Saturday’s Ontario Progressive Conservative conference, NDP MPP Peter Kormos called Tory an articulate and effective speaker.
Tory’s half-hour speech was certainly articulate. But it wasn’t too effective.
In the week leading up to the PC convention, the media had pegged the most interesting item on the conference agenda: the vote that would take place immediately after party leader Tory’s speech, deciding whether there would be a leadership review or not. Most critics had predicted that Tory would need at least two-thirds of the party’s vote in order to gather enough support to stay on as leader.
Others, like Kormos, said it didn’t matter how many votes Tory got on Saturday—his leadership had been in jeopardy since October 10.
The day of the last provincial election was “a humbling experience” for Tory and for the Conservative party, he said in his speech. After a humiliating defeat in which the party gained few new seats in the legislature, and in which Tory himself lost the riding of Don Valley West to Liberal Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, major factions of the party were calling for a leadership review.
Kormos, who attended the convention as a “monitor” (read: spy) for the NDP, said Tory would be in a very difficult and unenviable position.
“He’s going to be constantly swimming upstream,” he said.
Calling the speech “critical” to his future position, Kormos said it was clear that Tory’s goal would be to “avoid more slippage” in support levels, as opposed to trying to gain new ground. He said he couldn’t predict what Tory’s strategy would be, adding that his surprising adherence to the issue of funding faith-based schools -— arguably the policy that cost Tory the 2007 election -- made him somewhat unpredictable.
“Hopefully he had better advice on this speech than on the election platform,” said Kormos.
Tory’s speech was an intelligent and humble affair, beginning with an apology for having let the party down and a promise to do better next time. He argued that it would be a waste of time for the party to spend the next year in a “divisive, expensive leadership” race when they should be focusing instead on issues like health care, education and community safety.
“Let me be clear: if I believed the party’s chances in the next election would be better with another leader, I would step aside immediately,” Tory said. “But our own history, and that of other parties, has shown that switching leaders after a defeat is not the path to victory.”
He cited the one case in which the Conservatives kept Mike Harris as their leader after a defeat, resulting in two successive majority governments. He also mentioned Prime Minister Stephen Harper, describing his current federal administration as “a Conservative government of purpose and principle”—-to which the conference delegates responded with deafening applause.
Unfortunately for Tory, Kormos pointed out that the reference to Harper got a stronger reaction from the audience than anything else in the speech.
“The audience did not respond,” Kormos said afterward to reporters. “A whole lot of this audience was sitting on its hands, even at points when any Conservative should have been enthusiastic.”
Although Kormos thought the speech was “well-delivered” and “obviously well-crafted,” reaching out to more liberal issues like societal violence and also to “hardcore former Harrisites,” he said it came four months too late.
“I’m convinced that even most of the Liberals—-when I saw how little they had on their agenda after being elected, I began to reach the conclusion that they didn’t expect to win,” said Kormos. “Mr. Tory was the premier-in-waiting until he forced and drove his faith-based school agenda. He handed the election to the Liberals who ran with virtually no platform.”
Dave Thornton, a Liberal staffer and monitor who attended the conference, would not comment on what his party would make of Tory’s speech.
“I’m here as a volunteer and an observer,” he said. He referred questions to labour minister Brad Duguid. Calls to Duguid’s office manager this week were not returned.
The results of the vote following Tory’s speech were 66.9 per cent against a leadership review. Tory took several hours to think about his decision before stating that he would stay on as party leader late Saturday night.
Among other issues being discussed following the results is the question of where Tory will run in the 2011 election. Speculation about which PC candidate might be likely to step down and offer his or her riding to Tory has been fruitless so far. Kormos said he hadn’t heard of any contenders.
The thrill of covering the convention for class was two-fold: not only did we get out of writing the following week's assignment on the yawn-a-thon federal budget, but we also got to witness the infamous speech by John "Please Don't Fire Me" Tory. Can you stand the excitement?
Anyway, with the number of articles printed about this in the week after the convention, this story will seem a bit outdated at this point but I'm only getting around to posting it now. Chalk it up to the 18 other assignments I'm already working on for the next few weeks, multiply that by job applications, and subtract the energy I lost by randomly getting sick a few days ago.
********
In the upstairs hallway of the London Convention Centre, just before John Tory’s speech at last Saturday’s Ontario Progressive Conservative conference, NDP MPP Peter Kormos called Tory an articulate and effective speaker.
Tory’s half-hour speech was certainly articulate. But it wasn’t too effective.
In the week leading up to the PC convention, the media had pegged the most interesting item on the conference agenda: the vote that would take place immediately after party leader Tory’s speech, deciding whether there would be a leadership review or not. Most critics had predicted that Tory would need at least two-thirds of the party’s vote in order to gather enough support to stay on as leader.
Others, like Kormos, said it didn’t matter how many votes Tory got on Saturday—his leadership had been in jeopardy since October 10.
The day of the last provincial election was “a humbling experience” for Tory and for the Conservative party, he said in his speech. After a humiliating defeat in which the party gained few new seats in the legislature, and in which Tory himself lost the riding of Don Valley West to Liberal Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, major factions of the party were calling for a leadership review.
Kormos, who attended the convention as a “monitor” (read: spy) for the NDP, said Tory would be in a very difficult and unenviable position.
“He’s going to be constantly swimming upstream,” he said.
Calling the speech “critical” to his future position, Kormos said it was clear that Tory’s goal would be to “avoid more slippage” in support levels, as opposed to trying to gain new ground. He said he couldn’t predict what Tory’s strategy would be, adding that his surprising adherence to the issue of funding faith-based schools -— arguably the policy that cost Tory the 2007 election -- made him somewhat unpredictable.
“Hopefully he had better advice on this speech than on the election platform,” said Kormos.
Tory’s speech was an intelligent and humble affair, beginning with an apology for having let the party down and a promise to do better next time. He argued that it would be a waste of time for the party to spend the next year in a “divisive, expensive leadership” race when they should be focusing instead on issues like health care, education and community safety.
“Let me be clear: if I believed the party’s chances in the next election would be better with another leader, I would step aside immediately,” Tory said. “But our own history, and that of other parties, has shown that switching leaders after a defeat is not the path to victory.”
He cited the one case in which the Conservatives kept Mike Harris as their leader after a defeat, resulting in two successive majority governments. He also mentioned Prime Minister Stephen Harper, describing his current federal administration as “a Conservative government of purpose and principle”—-to which the conference delegates responded with deafening applause.
Unfortunately for Tory, Kormos pointed out that the reference to Harper got a stronger reaction from the audience than anything else in the speech.
“The audience did not respond,” Kormos said afterward to reporters. “A whole lot of this audience was sitting on its hands, even at points when any Conservative should have been enthusiastic.”
Although Kormos thought the speech was “well-delivered” and “obviously well-crafted,” reaching out to more liberal issues like societal violence and also to “hardcore former Harrisites,” he said it came four months too late.
“I’m convinced that even most of the Liberals—-when I saw how little they had on their agenda after being elected, I began to reach the conclusion that they didn’t expect to win,” said Kormos. “Mr. Tory was the premier-in-waiting until he forced and drove his faith-based school agenda. He handed the election to the Liberals who ran with virtually no platform.”
Dave Thornton, a Liberal staffer and monitor who attended the conference, would not comment on what his party would make of Tory’s speech.
“I’m here as a volunteer and an observer,” he said. He referred questions to labour minister Brad Duguid. Calls to Duguid’s office manager this week were not returned.
The results of the vote following Tory’s speech were 66.9 per cent against a leadership review. Tory took several hours to think about his decision before stating that he would stay on as party leader late Saturday night.
Among other issues being discussed following the results is the question of where Tory will run in the 2011 election. Speculation about which PC candidate might be likely to step down and offer his or her riding to Tory has been fruitless so far. Kormos said he hadn’t heard of any contenders.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Selfish Ontarians want to keep all their neurosurgical patients to themselves
This is a piece I wrote for my political reporting class. Funnily enough, I originally thought about writing this story after reading an article in the Globe about the expert panel report on neurosurgery... and then the day after I submitted this story to my instructor, the Globe published another piece along the same lines.
******
It’s been less than two months since the Ontario ministry of health and long-term care has implemented the first phase of an expert panel’s recommendations on how to improve access to neurosurgery. Already, the number of patients being transferred to the United States for surgery has decreased from at least 15 per month to three, a decrease of more than 80 per cent.
“We feel there’s an early success there,” said ministry spokesperson Andrew Morrison.
The expert panel report, which was released publicly on February 15, made 21 recommendations for ways to improve patient care. The first phase of action required the Ontario government to provide extra funding to the University Health Network, based in Toronto, so that 100 additional neurosurgery cases could be dealt with over the current and next fiscal years.
“From the ministry standpoint, we are not doctors and we’re not medical experts, but we are excellent at funding--we hold the purse strings,” Morrison said. “So what the expert panel told us was that if you’re able to fund additional neurosurgery cases, that should help with [reducing the number of] out-of-country transfers.”
Morrison said it will take time to determine how effectively the funding improves overall service to patients, but the short-term results look promising.
The funding will help obtain access to more beds, operating rooms and extra nursing and hospital staff.
However, in some cases it’s not just a question of funding but of qualified, available neurosurgeons. Morrison said there are shortages of doctors across Ontario and the ministry is working with training colleges and universities to expand medical education.
“That’s something that we look at (on) an ongoing basis, not necessarily related to neurosurgery but as an overall approach to healthcare in Ontario, and not just medical students but nursing students and all the other disciplines and allied healthcare professionals that are part of the Ontario healthcare system,” he said.
He pointed out that neurosurgery is a highly-skilled area of medicine, and that it may be difficult to find good candidates to fill those roles.
James Rutka, one of the authors of the expert panel report, said there’s no question that part of the problem is a need for more doctors.
“We not only need these trained individuals but we need more of them, because neurosurgery is a very exacting profession and discipline, and the population is growing but the number of neurosurgeons has not grown at the same rate,” said Rutka, a surgeon and researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children and the chair of the University of Toronto’s division of neurosurgery.
Rutka said part of the solution is to convince medical students that neurosurgery is a worthwhile specialty. Hospitals have to be able to promise students that after medical school and up to 10 additional years of rigorous training, there will be jobs waiting for them, he said.
The expert panel’s recommendations for phase two include “rolling out” the changes already put in place at UHN to all 13 hospitals in Ontario that provide access to neurosurgery. In order to increase access at all of these centres, Morrison said the government will be working with external healthcare providers. This means Ontario citizens will get the benefit of publicly-funded healthcare while also using the services of private healthcare teams.
So where is the line between public and private healthcare?
Morrison emphasized that “the government is committed to offering universal, publicly-funded healthcare to Ontarians,” and that any services funded by the government are public services. He also referred to the Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act, passed in 2004, which closed the loopholes to extra billing user fees and privately-funded healthcare that were discovered in the past.
Essentially, contracting out to external businesses to take care of shortages in neurosurgery was part of the problem, not the solution, said Morrison. “That’s kind of what we were doing—we were sending emergency cases out of the country. So we were paying an external provider to do the work.”
Instead, the ministry is focusing on keeping neurosurgical procedures inside the province—even if it has to put up additional funding and bring in outside specialists to do the work.
Ontario isn’t the only jurisdiction in Canada to be making changes in the direction of two-tier health care. The Globe and Mail reported in a recent article that Quebec health minister Philippe Couillard has agreed to allow doctors to have “duo” practices in both the public and private systems. The change came as a response to a provincial healthcare report called “Getting our money’s worth” which proposed many changes, including allowing private insurance companies to cover public health services.
Couillard cautioned Quebecers about the changes, saying they “must have no impact on the public health care system and no impact on access to care by the general public.” But critics, including University of Toronto law professor Colleen Flood, have said Quebec has taken a firm step toward a two-tier system.
Rutka said incorporating the private sector into neurosurgery wouldn’t work, though it might for other areas of medicine.
“You couldn’t set up a private clinic with a building that would have everything that a neurosurgeon needs to do neurosurgery without investing millions and millions of dollars, and for a relatively small number of patients who would benefit in a private clinic setting from that kind of service,” he said.
“It just would not make any good business sense.”
Rutka said that for other specialties that are less cost-intensive than neurosurgery, it may not be a bad idea to look into privatization. But he also believes in improving the system we already have.
“I’m a firm believer and very proud of the Canadian healthcare system,” he said.
“On balance, it’s a wonderful system that we have in place here. It can be better, and we slipped behind on losing patients to the United States with these transfers because our system became full. But it’s a correctable problem.”
The expert panel will be meeting again within a week.
******
It’s been less than two months since the Ontario ministry of health and long-term care has implemented the first phase of an expert panel’s recommendations on how to improve access to neurosurgery. Already, the number of patients being transferred to the United States for surgery has decreased from at least 15 per month to three, a decrease of more than 80 per cent.
“We feel there’s an early success there,” said ministry spokesperson Andrew Morrison.
The expert panel report, which was released publicly on February 15, made 21 recommendations for ways to improve patient care. The first phase of action required the Ontario government to provide extra funding to the University Health Network, based in Toronto, so that 100 additional neurosurgery cases could be dealt with over the current and next fiscal years.
“From the ministry standpoint, we are not doctors and we’re not medical experts, but we are excellent at funding--we hold the purse strings,” Morrison said. “So what the expert panel told us was that if you’re able to fund additional neurosurgery cases, that should help with [reducing the number of] out-of-country transfers.”
Morrison said it will take time to determine how effectively the funding improves overall service to patients, but the short-term results look promising.
The funding will help obtain access to more beds, operating rooms and extra nursing and hospital staff.
However, in some cases it’s not just a question of funding but of qualified, available neurosurgeons. Morrison said there are shortages of doctors across Ontario and the ministry is working with training colleges and universities to expand medical education.
“That’s something that we look at (on) an ongoing basis, not necessarily related to neurosurgery but as an overall approach to healthcare in Ontario, and not just medical students but nursing students and all the other disciplines and allied healthcare professionals that are part of the Ontario healthcare system,” he said.
He pointed out that neurosurgery is a highly-skilled area of medicine, and that it may be difficult to find good candidates to fill those roles.
James Rutka, one of the authors of the expert panel report, said there’s no question that part of the problem is a need for more doctors.
“We not only need these trained individuals but we need more of them, because neurosurgery is a very exacting profession and discipline, and the population is growing but the number of neurosurgeons has not grown at the same rate,” said Rutka, a surgeon and researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children and the chair of the University of Toronto’s division of neurosurgery.
Rutka said part of the solution is to convince medical students that neurosurgery is a worthwhile specialty. Hospitals have to be able to promise students that after medical school and up to 10 additional years of rigorous training, there will be jobs waiting for them, he said.
The expert panel’s recommendations for phase two include “rolling out” the changes already put in place at UHN to all 13 hospitals in Ontario that provide access to neurosurgery. In order to increase access at all of these centres, Morrison said the government will be working with external healthcare providers. This means Ontario citizens will get the benefit of publicly-funded healthcare while also using the services of private healthcare teams.
So where is the line between public and private healthcare?
Morrison emphasized that “the government is committed to offering universal, publicly-funded healthcare to Ontarians,” and that any services funded by the government are public services. He also referred to the Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act, passed in 2004, which closed the loopholes to extra billing user fees and privately-funded healthcare that were discovered in the past.
Essentially, contracting out to external businesses to take care of shortages in neurosurgery was part of the problem, not the solution, said Morrison. “That’s kind of what we were doing—we were sending emergency cases out of the country. So we were paying an external provider to do the work.”
Instead, the ministry is focusing on keeping neurosurgical procedures inside the province—even if it has to put up additional funding and bring in outside specialists to do the work.
Ontario isn’t the only jurisdiction in Canada to be making changes in the direction of two-tier health care. The Globe and Mail reported in a recent article that Quebec health minister Philippe Couillard has agreed to allow doctors to have “duo” practices in both the public and private systems. The change came as a response to a provincial healthcare report called “Getting our money’s worth” which proposed many changes, including allowing private insurance companies to cover public health services.
Couillard cautioned Quebecers about the changes, saying they “must have no impact on the public health care system and no impact on access to care by the general public.” But critics, including University of Toronto law professor Colleen Flood, have said Quebec has taken a firm step toward a two-tier system.
Rutka said incorporating the private sector into neurosurgery wouldn’t work, though it might for other areas of medicine.
“You couldn’t set up a private clinic with a building that would have everything that a neurosurgeon needs to do neurosurgery without investing millions and millions of dollars, and for a relatively small number of patients who would benefit in a private clinic setting from that kind of service,” he said.
“It just would not make any good business sense.”
Rutka said that for other specialties that are less cost-intensive than neurosurgery, it may not be a bad idea to look into privatization. But he also believes in improving the system we already have.
“I’m a firm believer and very proud of the Canadian healthcare system,” he said.
“On balance, it’s a wonderful system that we have in place here. It can be better, and we slipped behind on losing patients to the United States with these transfers because our system became full. But it’s a correctable problem.”
The expert panel will be meeting again within a week.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
This week's issue of The Reporter: more on Glen Pearson, our favorite firefighting, money-raising politician!
Well hello, loyal readers. If you read my story about Glen Pearson about a month ago, my contribution to this week's edition of 'The Reporter' is a follow-up story on an issue that came up in my original interview with him. I was still waiting on some information from CIDA, which didn't arrive by the time we printed our issue, so if I find out any new updates I'll post them here.
Lots of other interesting stories this week--take a look!
http://www.fims.uwo.ca/olr
Money promised to Darfur refugees still in limbo
MP Glen Pearson says Sudan was told aid had been approved
By Meghan Moloney
When London MP Glen Pearson was in Sudan with other aid workers in January, he discovered that the government of Canada had told a group of refugees in Darfur they may be getting $3 million in aid by March.
Yet Canadians haven't been given any information about the deal.
Canadian International Development Agency officials had contacted Sudanese leaders as early as a year ago to discuss the funds, but the government has made no public announcement about any money going to Sudan.
Pearson had been lobbying the government for money to help these refugees since the first time he made a speech in the House of Commons last February.
He "just about broke down" when he found out about the aid money, he said.
"I felt a huge sense of relief," he said. But he was also disappointed. He would have been happier if the government had indicated that it was following up on his call for action.
"I had a terrible first year in Parliament," he said. "I felt I wasn't making a difference."
An active human rights and development worker in Sudan for more than a decade, Pearson was elected MP for London North Centre in November 2006. Before beginning his duties in Parliament, he and his wife, fellow activist Jane Roy, made their annual trip to Sudan with their NGO, Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan, and a group of London-based volunteers in January 2007.
During that trip, they met a traveler coming from the northern region of Darfur who told them there were 100,000 new refugees trying to escape the violence in the area.
Pearson and his team investigated the situation, along with the International Organization for Migration.
"It was desperate," said Pearson. "In fact it was awful. There was no water, no food, no clothing."
The refugees were people who had migrated from southern Sudan to Darfur around 20 years ago to escape the violence of the civil war, said Pearson. But because of the current conflict in Darfur, they are once again trying to find a home.
Before returning to Canada, Pearson met with regional leaders working with the IOM and asked them to draw up a budget to help the new refugees. They asked for $6 million. Pearson presented the budget in the House of Commons in February 2007.
"I was listened to very respectfully," he said,. But there was no response from the government.
"I wore that (weight) all year-I felt sick about it," said Pearson.
But when he returned to Sudan three weeks ago, he found a different story. According to IOM officials, the Canadian government had contacted the organization to say that it was aware of the problem but asked the IOM to cut the budget to $3 million.
After Pearson returned to Canada for the new Parliamentary session, the IOM officials told Roy, who was still in Sudan, that they had been contacted by CIDA and had been told the new budget had been approved. The grant was conditional on sufficient funds being left over at the end of the current fiscal year, but Pearson said he's confident there will be enough and that the money will be transferred by March.
There has been no official confirmation from CIDA or other government departments about the money for Sudan. Pearson is not aware which officials had been communicating with the IOM. When contacted, a CIDA representative said the department was preparing to announce its plans for Sudan as well as other areas in need of aid, but she couldn't put a timeline on it
Pearson doesn't think the money is tied to the success of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's budget, scheduled for early March. Although he appreciates that the government is acting on his request, he's still unsure why the Conservatives waited so long to mention the transfer of money to Darfur and why officials in Sudan were notified before Canadians, he said.
"If I wanted to be partisan, I could (ask) why didn't they tell anyone until now," Pearson said. But he could understand why the government wouldn't raise false hopes before confirming any aid. "If I want to be realistic, I would say why would they tell anyone they were going to give the money before it was guaranteed."
However, Pearson said it would have been helpful if the Conservatives had made it clear that they were following up on his request.
"We need to work on communication," he said. "We're talking about money to keep people alive."
Lots of other interesting stories this week--take a look!
http://www.fims.uwo.ca/olr
Money promised to Darfur refugees still in limbo
MP Glen Pearson says Sudan was told aid had been approved
By Meghan Moloney
When London MP Glen Pearson was in Sudan with other aid workers in January, he discovered that the government of Canada had told a group of refugees in Darfur they may be getting $3 million in aid by March.
Yet Canadians haven't been given any information about the deal.
Canadian International Development Agency officials had contacted Sudanese leaders as early as a year ago to discuss the funds, but the government has made no public announcement about any money going to Sudan.
Pearson had been lobbying the government for money to help these refugees since the first time he made a speech in the House of Commons last February.
He "just about broke down" when he found out about the aid money, he said.
"I felt a huge sense of relief," he said. But he was also disappointed. He would have been happier if the government had indicated that it was following up on his call for action.
"I had a terrible first year in Parliament," he said. "I felt I wasn't making a difference."
An active human rights and development worker in Sudan for more than a decade, Pearson was elected MP for London North Centre in November 2006. Before beginning his duties in Parliament, he and his wife, fellow activist Jane Roy, made their annual trip to Sudan with their NGO, Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan, and a group of London-based volunteers in January 2007.
During that trip, they met a traveler coming from the northern region of Darfur who told them there were 100,000 new refugees trying to escape the violence in the area.
Pearson and his team investigated the situation, along with the International Organization for Migration.
"It was desperate," said Pearson. "In fact it was awful. There was no water, no food, no clothing."
The refugees were people who had migrated from southern Sudan to Darfur around 20 years ago to escape the violence of the civil war, said Pearson. But because of the current conflict in Darfur, they are once again trying to find a home.
Before returning to Canada, Pearson met with regional leaders working with the IOM and asked them to draw up a budget to help the new refugees. They asked for $6 million. Pearson presented the budget in the House of Commons in February 2007.
"I was listened to very respectfully," he said,. But there was no response from the government.
"I wore that (weight) all year-I felt sick about it," said Pearson.
But when he returned to Sudan three weeks ago, he found a different story. According to IOM officials, the Canadian government had contacted the organization to say that it was aware of the problem but asked the IOM to cut the budget to $3 million.
After Pearson returned to Canada for the new Parliamentary session, the IOM officials told Roy, who was still in Sudan, that they had been contacted by CIDA and had been told the new budget had been approved. The grant was conditional on sufficient funds being left over at the end of the current fiscal year, but Pearson said he's confident there will be enough and that the money will be transferred by March.
There has been no official confirmation from CIDA or other government departments about the money for Sudan. Pearson is not aware which officials had been communicating with the IOM. When contacted, a CIDA representative said the department was preparing to announce its plans for Sudan as well as other areas in need of aid, but she couldn't put a timeline on it
Pearson doesn't think the money is tied to the success of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's budget, scheduled for early March. Although he appreciates that the government is acting on his request, he's still unsure why the Conservatives waited so long to mention the transfer of money to Darfur and why officials in Sudan were notified before Canadians, he said.
"If I wanted to be partisan, I could (ask) why didn't they tell anyone until now," Pearson said. But he could understand why the government wouldn't raise false hopes before confirming any aid. "If I want to be realistic, I would say why would they tell anyone they were going to give the money before it was guaranteed."
However, Pearson said it would have been helpful if the Conservatives had made it clear that they were following up on his request.
"We need to work on communication," he said. "We're talking about money to keep people alive."
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