Recently, Steven Blaney, minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, launched a pilot mental health plan. The idea is to begin sending intensely ill offenders to treatment centres. The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre offered to be one of the first spaces for the project. They hope to provide adequate bed space for these female inmates at their Brockville centre. However, Brockville only has two beds available to the inmates but L’Institut Philippe Pinel in Montreal has 12.

Blaney says the plan will enforce five main ideals in prison systems: timely assessment, effective management, sound intervention, ongoing training, and robust governance and oversight.

Ashley’s adoptive mother Coralee Smith and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS), a group that “work with and for women and girls in the justice system“, are critical of the pilot project.

Smith believes more has to be talked over and done about the handling of women who are thought to have behavioural problems instead of mental health issues, like her late daughter.

A history: Ashley Smith committed suicide by strangulation while under custody at Grand Valley Institution for Women in October in 2007. She was 18 years old and had been in juvenile court many times for minor offences while she was living in New Brunswick.

In March 2003, at her second mental assessment at Pierre Caissie Centre (PCC), she was diagnosed with ADHD, borderline personality disorder, and narcissistic personality traits. Ashley was released from PCC for unruly behaviour but then eventually taken to New Brunswick Youth Centre (NBYC).

This is where she became the subject of several hundred incident reports and spent many nights alone in solitary confinement

September 2006, after much push and pull and court dates with NBYC staff, she was transferred to Nova Institution for Women in Nova Scotia after about 20 attempts at suicide. After Nova, Ashley was transferred to six different institutions over the course of eight months. After April 2007, she was moved once every month.

At this point, she made so many suicide attempts that her facial blood vessels burst, which left her permanently discoloured. She had constant nosebleeds and lost sight in one eye.

During her last suicide attempt, guards stood and watched Ashley strangle herself until they took her down and she was pronounced dead. Last December, Ontario coroner’s jury ruled Ashley’s death a homicide.

The constant mistreatment she suffered through has been noticed too late. But if the government continues to recognize their neglect, there is a least some hope we could see a future with no more Ashley Smiths—and that no one will ever suffer the way she and her family did.

It’s all quite bittersweet. The government finally admitting that Canada needs this information is huge. But the numbers are painful. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told a parliamentary committee that the findings were a “surprise.” To whom, I wonder? Definitely not to the familes, friends, and communities of these missing women and girls. But I digress.

“What we can say is that there is a misrepresentation, or overrepresentation, within the aboriginal community of missing and murdered women,” he announced. “There are 4 percent aboriginal women in Canada—I think there are 16 percent of the murdered women who are aboriginal, 12 percent of the missing women are aboriginal.”

I suppose this is why he is surprised. But it still hasn’t occurred to the government and law enforcement to listen to these peoples. As wonderful as the official report is, this still must be painful to many families who did research that was deemed invalid.

APTN reported the RCMP requested a small look at files from 200 different police forces across Canada to collect data. And it has the ability to be useful.

“This initiative will help the RCMP and its partners identify the risk and vulnerability factors associated with missing and murdered aboriginal women to guide us in the development of future prevention, intervention and enforcement policies and initiatives with the intent of reducing violence against aboriginal women and girls,” Sergeant Julie Gagnon said in an email to the Globe and Mail.

RCMP may finally view aboriginal peoples lives as important enough to look into their deaths, despite criticizing the NWAC for its numbers in the past and politicians spitting in the face of such inquiries.

Yet the stance on inquiries themselves has not changed. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney rejected the calls from opposition at least four times. In the same breath, Blaney announced that foul play is suspected in two-thirds of those 160 missing cases, while the rest are for unknown reasons. His rejection and this data seem to counteract each other.

Blaney also said that it was a time for action instead of more paperwork. But, in March, during the horrible time when Loretta Saunders was found dead and another inquiry request was tabled, Claudette Dumont-Smith, executive director of NWAC, explained the importance of an inquiry.

The Globe and Mail explained Dumont-Smith’s stance like this: “an inquiry would study every angle of the problem in a way that has not been done before, and could compel people who have important information to testify.”

Seems reasonable.

If Canada does not begin asking marginalized groups’ for input, we will be in a perpetual state of oppressor-oppressed. Most of us are taking the right steps forward. To avoid taking five steps back, government and law officials must become willing to learn from those they previously called irrational, because it turns out they were right.

This act would successfully marginalize already marginalized groups like aboriginal peoples, seniors, students away from home, and low-income people. Which is a lot of Canadians.

But don’t despair, here’s the FTW opportunity.

Tomorrow, there will be a rally. The Canadian Federation of Students Ontario (CFS), Lead Now, and the Council of Canadians have formed an alliance to organize a “day of action“.  According to the Facebook page, tomorrow, Saturday at 1 p.m., in Dundas Square people will come together to fight for Canada’s fading democracy.

Students in the GTA were at Yonge and Dundas spreading information about the rally and bill yesterday hoping to strengthen the turnout this weekend. CFS also released a video in early March warning Canadians that the bill could introduce “U.S. style voter suppression” in a country that already has ridiculously low voter turnout. The Star believes this lack of interest in voting, especially in young adults, is the true reason the government could ever consider C-23 a solution.

CFS is ready to prove them wrong.

All Canadians interested, within the realm of proximity, are encouraged to contact action@cfsontario.ca for more information. And all Canadians should be interested.

Our southern neighbours have taken another step towards recognizing the need for equal pay for women.

This past Tuesday, president Obama vocalized his support for the Paycheck Fairness Act to be passed. The act points out the loopholes in the ironically titled Equal Pay Act and, if passed, would strive towards proper payment for working women across the nation.

Obama went as far as to taunt the Senate into making the correct choice.

“If Republicans in Congress want to prove me wrong, if they want to show that they, in fact, do care about women being paid the same as men, then show me,” Obama said. “They can start tomorrow. They can join us in this, the 21st century, and vote yes on the Paycheck Fairness Act.”

Unfortunately, the Congress did not pass the bill. Shocked? No. But you can’t blame a girl for hoping against hope.

Thankfully, Canada has its own warriors who are devoted to the cause. Toronto’s Mary Cornish, human rights lawyer and chair of Ontario’s Equal Pay coalition, has been gathering information on this for years. Cornish was the driving force behind the Pay Equity Act in 1987. Last year, she requested that Ontario’s premier Kathleen Wynne make April 9 Equal Pay Day.

It didn’t happen then, but good news, it’s happened now. This past Wednesday, our provincial government moved ahead and announced April 16 as Ontario Equal Pay Day.

The coalition’s website celebrated the government’s actions but acknowledge the war’s not won. Especially not for marginalized women.”Women of colour, aboriginal women and women with disabilities face the worst discrimination,” the website said.

Angella MacEwen, a journalist for rabble.ca, spoke on this issue in her piece “From he-cession to precarious she-covery”.

Her post included a table on “employment gains and losses” which identifies the vast gaps between payment for the two genders. But MacEwen also reminds readers that women of colour, women with disabilities and women new to the country were not included on this specific table. And let’s not forget about trans women.

But any and all visibility matters. The coalition recently posted a video reenacting the ridiculousness of the wage gap, featuring a male voice over. In it, the narrator calls the gap a “mystery of nature.” But the main character calls him out on his bull.

“[The wage gap] happens because society undervalues women’s work,” she informs the narrator. “But together we can change that.”

Hear, hear!

Earlier this week, Canadian doctor Danielle Martin battled the rather patriotic U.S. Republican Senator Richard Burr at a subcommittee meeting in Washington, D.C. to discuss different health care systems around the world.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic here but it sure seemed like a battle—and Martin, the vice-president of the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, effectively defeated the North Carolina senator every time he tried to point out flaws in Canadian health care, and by extension Obama-care.

The video, posted above, is filled with quips and ripostes between the two, but my personal favourite has to be the golden response Martin gave when Burr asked her how many Canadians died while on waiting lists: “I don’t, sir, but I know that there are 45,000 in America who die waiting because they don’t have insurance at all.”

Here’s hoping this becomes a new Canadian saying.

On February 17, Saunders was reported missing from her dorm at Saint Mary’s University Halifax. What followed was a desperate manhunt for the 26-year-old that ended on the 26, when her remains were found abandoned on the side of a New Brunswick highway, buried under thick winter snow. Her death has left family distraught, friends confused and angry, and one university thesis unfinished—a thesis that focused on the crisis of murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada.

It is lost on few that Saunders is now a victim to the very violence she was trying to raise awareness of and eventually stop. A violence that has been described as a “tragedy” by David Langtry, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, at an Economic Club of Canada speech on Tuesday. “The murder or disappearance of some 600 aboriginal women and girls over the past 30 years is a national tragedy,” he said. “We must get to the root causes of these disturbing facts.”

And indeed, the bitter tragedy of Saunders’ death seems to have galvanized the country into finally taking action on the longstanding issue in Canada. The comment from Langtry, along with the support of the three main party leaders in Nova Scotia, adds real strength to the growing support for a national public inquiry into the number of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Nova Scotian Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil said in a joint statement Thursday with the leaders of the PCs and NDP that while the federal government had tried to address some of the issues involved with missing aboriginal women, further input was needed: “I commend the federal government for its efforts so far, but I urge my federal colleagues to take this work one step further.”

The inquiry has been backed by Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders since last July when they met with aboriginal leaders to discuss the problem. With the death of Saunders there are now more voices calling for the inquiry than ever.

However, the federal Conservatives are resisting, saying that they have done, and are continuing to do enough to deal with the issue. According to APTN, Status of Women Minister Kellie Leitch said last Thursday that “the government had already taken ‘concrete action’ by promising $25 million toward the issue in the latest budget.”

The Canadian Human Right Commission disagrees.

In an annual report, given to the government on Tuesday, it says “The fact remains that there has been little concrete actions so far. The problem requires real, sustainable solutions that will demand an unprecedented degree of effort and commitment with federal, provincial, territorial and First Nations governments working together.”

At an emotional vigil held for Saunders on Wednesday at Parliament Hill, Holly Jarrett, her cousin, told a crowd of over 100 people that: “It’s not just about one woman like our beloved Loretta… More than 800 aboriginal women have been murdered or gone missing in Canada since 1990.” She also presented parliament with a petition in support of the inquiry.

Blake Leggette, 26, and Victoria Henneberry, 28, Saunders’ roommates have both been arrested and charged with first degree murder in conjunction with her death.

The day of action is organized by the End Immigration Detention network, and comes a few days after the B.C. Coroners Service announced that it will launch an inquest into the death of Lucia Vega Jimenez, who died two months ago after attempting to kill herself while in detention at a Vancouver Airport holding centre.

The death has highlighted the need for a change to the Canadian Immigration laws as Harsha Walia, of No One Is Illegal Vancouver, told The Star “An independent, transparent and public inquest is a necessary first step to shine some light on the secrecy that has surrounded the tragic death of Lucia. However, an inquest alone is not sufficient to address the impunity with which CBSA operates. The devastating consequences of policies like indefinite detention, mandatory detention and administrative detention in Canada need to be scrapped.”

Walia also told the Star that while an independent complaint and investigation process is crucial to the civilian oversight of the CBSA, political and legislative changes are needed to ensure the agency is accountable and transparent to the public.

Canada is the only western country that has no limit to the time an immigrant can be detained. This is a stark contrast to many other countries, such as the U.S. and those in the EU, which have strict laws that limit the maximum time to only 90 days. The Canadian procedure states that as long as the individual in question has a “monthly detention review meeting,” he or she can be detained indefinitely. This has resulted in some people, who cannot be returned to their home country due to circumstances outside their control, being incarcerated for over a decade.

Each city protest will be focusing on different issues within the current system of immigration. Toronto’s protest will concentrate on ending indefinite detention because, says  Tings Chaks, the Toronto protest organizer, it has the largest number of migrant inmates. The Star reports that according to border officials, roughly 600 people are on immigration hold at a given time throughout the year. Of those, it adds, about 10 percent have been detained for over a year.

The petitions demand four major changes to be made to the Immigration Law that would make the system closer to international standards:

Freedom for the wrongly jailed: Release all migrant detainees who have been held for longer than 90 days.

End arbitrary and indefinite detention: Implement a 90-day “presumptive period”. If removal cannot happen within 90 days, immigration detainees must be released. Presumptive periods are recommended by the United Nations, and are the law in the United States and the European Union.

No maximum security holds: Immigration detainees should not be held in maximum security provincial jails; must have access to basic services and be close to family members.

Overhaul the adjudication process: Give migrants fair and full access to legal aid, bail programs and pro bono representation.

We hope the petitions will be enough to convince the government that change is needed, so more extreme protests, such as the 191 migrant detainees who went on hunger strike last year, will no longer be necessary.

But Alvena is also extraordinary. At the start of Grade 4, Alvena decided to take a stand against her bullies in one of the bravest and most inspiring ways. We all know it can be hard to put yourself out there, knowing others can judge (just see any YouTube comment if you want to see what I mean). Yet Alvena, a member of the Ahousaht First Nation, decided that the best way she could fight back against the bullies was to make her experience public.

She posted a picture of herself, in sports gear and ready to exercise, to the Facebook group Healthy Active Natives. The 9 year old then told her mother:

“I want you to tell everyone I get bullied about my weight and I want you to show everybody what I look like. I want you to show everybody that I am going to change because I want to start exercising, I want to start eating better.”

The photo, along with a chart keeping track of Alvena’s exercise work out, went viral almost overnight. The pair received hundreds of positive comments, thousands of likes, and even some donations, with well-wishers sending handy items like new shoes and store cards.

Annette, Alvena’s mother, told the Huffington Post “As I was reading [the comments to Alvena] I started crying because she was crying. I hugged her and asked if she wanted me to stop and she said, ‘No. I just can’t believe how many people care.'”

Annette has now started a new Facebook group called Team Avena so their many supporters have somewhere to channel their good vibes and supportive comments. As it stands Team Avena has over 1000 members, and is steadily growing.

As positive as all of this is, it also comes with a troubling undertone—something that Alvena’s mother Annette touches on in one of her comments to Nainaimo Daily News. Annette tells that paper that someone as young as Alvena shouldn’t have to worry about how much she eats or her exercise, but is supporting her 100 percent regardless.

And indeed, the focus of this story has very much been on Alvena changing herself to better fit in, rather than addressing the horrible attitudes around fat, and fat-shaming that played such a huge part in the attacks. With shows like America’s Biggest Loser becoming increasingly more pervasive in modern day society, and a growing acceptance of fat-shaming and the so-called “War on Fat,” people with different body types are facing more and more discrimination.

Thankfully, there many, many people fighting back. One website to check out is Militant Baker, and its many, awesome campaigns addressing existing prejudices on body types. One in particular, Bodies aren’t ugly, bullying is, compiles photos of people with a variety of body types juxtaposed against hateful messages formed from the auto-complete function on Google—capturing just how widespread body-shaming is for men and women of all ages. Each photo also features a defiant declarations against such shaming.

It seems that kids at Alvena’s new school, where she recently started, also have the right idea. Annette told the Huffington “It was a really good feeling for me to pick her up today and have her say, ‘Kids are telling me I’m pretty, mom.’ She’s never had that. She’s never had friends like that.”

Facebook announced the changes on its diversity page, and said that it had been working closely with its “network of support, a group of leading LGBT advocacy organizations” to ensure that everyone was properly represented in the Facebook cyber world.

Not only can users choose their gender, but they can also choose how Facebook addresses them by deciding which pronoun is used in conjunction with them: him, her, or they. In many ways, the move is ground-breaking. By allowing anyone to express their own gender, whatever that gender may be, Facebook is recognizing some of it users who are most marginalized in the mainstream.

Irene Miller, the president of Toronto Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) told the Toronto Sun: “This will help (youth) feel more confident within themselves and let everyone that they’re in contact with be comfortable in how they address them.”

And while this won’t affect everybody’s Facebook experience,  as Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison told the Associated Press: “There’s going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world.”

Still, while this is all good news it’s important to remember that this change by Facebook comes at a time in Canada where gender identity or expression is not included in the Canadian Human Rights. Bill C-279, which aims to “amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to include gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination” is still in consideration before the Canadian Senate.

The Sochi Winter Olympics, which start today, has been considered one of the most controversial games to date, if not the most. There are a multitude of reasons for this: from massive over-spending (the original budget was set at an already costly $12 billion, and is now at a staggering $51 billion), to the environmental impact the massive reconstruction of the resort town has caused (one reporter claimed she was warned not to splash water from the tap onto her face as it “contained something dangerous”).

But while these problems are certainly concerning, they aren’t out of the ordinary for the Olympics, which every year seem to get more and more outrageous. Russia’s anti-gay stance, however, casts a long shadow over the whole event, for much of the world—including Webb, and those who joined the protest.

“I listened to the things Putin was saying, and was horrified. This law, which is just Putin’s own belief, not Russia’s, is nothing but discrimination and I felt I had to do something or I couldn’t enjoy the games.”

The law, which passed last June, states that it is illegal to demonstrate “non-traditional relationships” in front of minors. That means you can be thrown in jail for holding hands with someone of the same sex in front of someone under 18. While not directly connected to the Olympics, this law is pretty much contradictory to the event’s spirit. After all, the Olympic charter states: “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”

Putin has told media that gay athletes and tourists would not be in any danger from the law, but added “but please, leave the kids alone”. Many countries, such as the U.S. and Canada, are putting pressure on Russia to can the law, and have openly spoken out against it. There is no sign, however, that Putin will make any changes.

Back in Queen’s Park, more and more runners keep showing up despite the weather (I’m somewhat certain I’ve lost a few toes to the cold). They join in with the flowing, glowing pink train, and take up the chant “Put the Poof in Putin”. All across the country similar protests are happening; people are making the statement that what is happening in Russia isn’t right. Even Google changed its doodle to a rainbow design of Winter Olympic sports.

“We want to show the world that we will not stand for such discrimination,” Webb tells me, “that Canada accepts all athletes, regardless of their sexuality. We want to do it in a peaceful, creative manner, and we want to send that message to Russia, with love.”