Canada prides itself on setting historic immigration targets and agreeing to resettle more refugees than most other countries. But Canada also continues to restrict asylum eligibility and increase restrictive border control measures, including holding asylum seekers in detention centres. Can Canada truly claim to be a safe haven while simultaneously transgressing the rights of those…

Citizens for Public Justice has long been concerned with public trust. On March 11, 1976, Chief Justice Bora Laskin of the Supreme Court reversed a decision by the Federal Court of Appeal and validated the intervention claim by The Committee for Justice and Liberty Foundation (CJL, the forerunner to CPJ). He declared that there was…

An increasing number of voices in Canada are calling on the federal government to tackle climate change and inequality together. At first glance, this might seem overly ambitious. Just addressing climate change alone will require big changes. To achieve the government’s commitment to net-zero emissions as early as possible, we will need to both accelerate…

Growing up, the environment was always Mother Earth, Yethka Makoche (a.k.a. Stoney Country). We existed within the rhythms of this land, its seasons and times of the moon: intimate times, related to the world around us where everything had a name and purpose. The names told us how we related, and how we belonged. The…

Within the first few weeks of the pandemic, the federal government moved quickly to provide income support to people across the country. A new program, the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), was created because it became quickly apparent that the existing system, Employment Insurance, was inadequate to deal with the scale of unemployment. However, the…

Canadian communities are comprised of individuals with different immigration status, coexisting in the same spaces and sharing similar experiences and realities. For some, the attributes of “permanence,” that Citizens and Permanent Residents have, or “transience,” for those with expiry dates on their Canadian documents, bear little significance in the realms of community and daily living—we…

The past 12 months have brought the reality of the climate emergency to the front door of people across Canada. Since this time last year, Canadians have experienced killer heatwaves, disastrous flooding, and choking wildfires. In the midst of this climate chaos, it can be hard to remember that the passage of the Canadian Net-Zero…

An Interview with the Our Voices Matter Advisory Council by Natalie Appleyard, February 2022. This edition of the Catalyst focuses on the themes of public trust and accountability. CPJ’s Natalie Appleyard asked members of the Ontario-based Our Voices Matter advisory council to share their thoughts on what could help build a sense of trust and…