Brad Wassink is CPJ's former communications coordinator.
A coalition of 35 Canadian churches and faith-based organizations have come together for an unprecedented, months-long campaign of personal environmental action coupled with federal climate advocacy.
In the summer of 2020, CPJ’s Board of Directors elected Cherilyn Spraakman as its new chair. Cherilyn spoke with Brad Wassink about her new role as CPJ’s Board chair.
We are on the cusp of seeing Canada’s first national poverty reduction strategy. And faith communities have played a major role in getting us here.
It’s been a long time coming. In 1989, Canada’s House of Commons unanimously voted to end child poverty by the year 2000. With 17.4 per cent of children in Canada living in poverty, clearly we failed to meet this commitment.
Submission to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform
October 2016
Download the Brief
CPJ recommends that the Canadian government adopt a system of mixed-member proportional representation (PR) that is effective, legitimate, engaging, accessible, inclusive, and representative.
From the Catalyst, Summer 2015
The News: A User’s Manual
By Alain de Botton
Signal, 2014
Reviewed by Brad Wassink
Given the profound impact the news has on our lives – how we use our time, spend our money, and cast our votes – the media deserves much more focus in our public justice discussions. In 1984, CPJ produced the “Charter of Social Rights and Responsibilities,” a framework for how people of faith and various organizations, including the media, should engage in public life.
In November 2011, a church submitted an application to sponsor a family of eight to come to Canada. At first, things were moving along well. The family was interviewed less than a year later, in July 2012. But now, more than two years since that interview and three years since the application was submitted, not only has the family not arrived, the sponsoring church has not heard anything from the Visa Office or Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).
Two years after the cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program came into effect, the medical community is still active and mobilized across Canada. Canadian doctors, nurses and other health professionals continue to condemn the cuts for their devastating effect on refugees, our public health system and the public purse.
But how are churches and faith communities responding?
Though the recession hit hard in 2008, we often cite 2009 as the year when markets rebounded and our recovery began. Still, almost five years later, that recovery has not reached everyone in Canada. For about 3 million low-income Canadians, the impact of the recession remains.
On June 30, 2012, the federal government made drastic cuts to health care being provided to refugees by the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP). This program includes coverage for medication, eye care, dental care, prosthetic devices, and wheelchairs. Now provinces and refugee sponsors, many of whom are churches, are forced to cover these expenses.
