Image courtesy of Dopamine Montréal.

A pride flag flaps defiantly in the wind above a welcoming front porch. A basket of free naloxone kits hangs on the front door. On the wall upstairs, a poster reads “Activities to avoid dying sad/to make you happy” and lists acupuncture, bowling, and picnics.

This is the home of Dopamine Montréal. Just like its namesake, Dopamine uptakes and releases a rush of essential resources to those who use illicit drugs. But the organization operates under the spectre of the law: Clients, many of whom are low-income or houseless, struggle to access employment, housing, and security as long as drug use is criminalized.

Montreal is considered a progressive urban centre, located in a province with relatively strong social services like universal daycare and subsidized college programs. When it comes to tackling the overdose crisis, though, the city is in traction. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 541 people died from an opioid-related drug overdose in Quebec in 2022, an increase of nearly 20 percent from the year before. Emergency interventions in the city of Montreal were reportedly four times as frequent in 2022 as they were before the pandemic. These numbers paint an incomplete picture, however. CACTUS Montréal, another harm reduction organization that serves the Gay Village, recorded a 350 percent increase in overdose deaths in the city from 2019 to 2022—about one per day. According to their numbers, as of this January, the rate has jumped to two per day.

Harm reduction groups such as Dopamine and CACTUS are filling the gaps in community care. Established in 1994 amid the HIV/AIDS crisis, Dopamine serves the Hochelaga- Maisonneuve neighbourhood through a day centre located in a converted home and a supervised injection site (SIS) a few streets over that operates from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. After what CACTUS says was a decade-long bureaucratic process involving loads of paperwork and city approval, the SIS opened in 2017 alongside CACTUS Montréal’s.

Dopamine was founded on three core values: humanism, accessibility, and solidarity. The words reinforce that Dopamine is part of a political struggle against the conditions that create poverty and lead to people being incarcerated for drug-related crimes.

Executive director Martin Pagé knows how the cycle works; he’s seen it firsthand through his personal experience and through Dopamine’s staff, several of whom used or continue to use their services. “We are par et pour,” he says, both by and for the community. Criminalizing drugs pushes the market underground, where products are cut with riskier substances, such as often-deadly fentanyl or carfentanil, at variable concentrations. Once someone’s drug use is made legible through a criminal record, barriers to housing and employment get even taller. “It’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing,” Pagé says. Without safe, controlled injection sites that provide sterile tools, the risk of contracting HIV or Hepatitis C grows significantly.

At Dopamine, academic experience and lived experience are both valued and essential to fostering trust with clients. Intervention coordinator Yanick Paradis has worked at Dopamine for 18 years, with 12 years of street work experience. Many staff and casual employees are users themselves, Paradis explains. “We involve the people who visit the organization at different levels,” he says. “We will compensate people for their work, no matter what kind, whether it’s lawn mowing or a service offer…Ideally, our group is led by the community.”

As the organization has a history rooted in the AIDS epidemic, an integral part of their community mandate is to make health services accessible. Dopamine runs a drop-in medical clinic every Tuesday for their regular clients. Though it’s not a totally effective alternative to Quebec’s crumbling health-care infrastructure, the clinic focuses on preventive care and follow-ups for those who face barriers to access. “We reflected on how we could bring community health closer, and have health care that gives people positive experiences,” Pagé explains.

Pagé says the pandemic exacerbated every problem the community group sees. Clients are in increasingly precarious housing situations; the social safety net is eroding and organizations like theirs represent the last threads. And sex workers, immigrants, and trans people all find themselves at the intersection of socioeconomic instability and government negligence.

As paramedics administered naloxone a record high of 291 times in the city in 2022, according to Radio-Canada, drug testing has become one of the most crucial services Dopamine and CACTUS have to offer. Data gathered by CACTUS reports that Montreal’s Gay Village is at the epicentre of the overdose crisis in Quebec. But municipal and provincial governments are not treating it that way, though there’s precedent to do better. British Columbia was granted a federal exemption to decriminalize possession of illicit substances weighing less than 2.5 grams in January of this year, while the city of Toronto began the process of applying for the same exemption in 2021. Long-progressive Edmonton, often subject to Alberta’s conservative political lean despite its ability to operate separately, tabled a motion to decriminalize drugs within the city. Over 100 harm reduction groups across the country support the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition’s proposal to make all drugs legal for personal use nationwide— but fierce opposition from some premiers, municipal governments and lobbyist groups makes it unlikely to move forward.

In the summer of 2022, Mayor Valérie Plante told the CBC that she supported the idea of decriminalization in Montreal. Her administration has yet to apply for the same exemption.

The municipal government’s vague response illustrates just how easy it is to shirk responsibility for a manufactured crisis. “We are actually in a worse situation than we were [in] the HIV pandemic,” says Jean-François Mary, CACTUS’s executive director. “Because actually, in those days, there was a real partnership between public health and community organizations.” In the 1990s, a Quebec coalition representing 31 community organizations gave presentations to a federal committee to advocate for increased funding and support. Now, Mary says that public health officials are detached from the reality of intervention on the ground, hindering their approach to resource allocation.

“They talk, we die,” is the slogan CACTUS and Dopamine jointly rallied behind at a protest in early April. They are pushing for decriminalization, increased funding from Quebec’s public health division, and a non-prohibitive approach to the overdose crisis. “And Valérie Plante is talking,” says Mary. “But what are they doing? What have they done?”

CACTUS provided the municipal government with the paperwork to apply for the exemption, according to Mary. In an email to This, the city’s media relations office referred to a non-partisan motion adopted by city councillors in 2021, asserting that they were in favour of decriminalizing simple possession and calling on the city to apply for the exemption. But they did not confirm that an application was in the works. They did say the “[police] will continue to apply the law.”

People working on the ground know that prohibition won’t help those already pushed to the margins. “An important saying in harm reduction is if you can’t help, then at least try to do no harm,” Pagé says. Whether Montreal’s policymakers will heed this duty of care remains to be seen.

When people talk about fantasy worlds, they often mean worlds populated with dwarves, elves, and magic. But in a way, stepping onto the convention floor of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference did feel like a fantasy. As the biggest mining conference on Earth, it’s frequented by some of the wealthiest in the world. It’s a place where smoked salmon and fancy cheeses lie heaped on trestle tables, free for the taking. Where dark-suited white businessmen modestly acknowledge the opportunities they create for “the Indigenous.” Where mining companies advertise investments in their projects by offering up entire countries like they’re new brands of kombucha. Try Ecuador!

Standing in crowds of laughing, mingling geologists, mining engineers, CEOs, and government representatives, it was genuinely hard to remember where they got their power and wealth, thousands of miles away.

The Mining Injustice Solidarity Network seeks to do just that. MISN brings attention to the aspects of mining many would rather not think about: human rights abuses, environmental destruction, and lawsuits and tax evasion. 

And this year, they did it through a treasure hunt. Participants showed up to a bar near the event, and coordinators from MISN handed them a series of questions to ask specific company representatives. The “hunters” then plunged into the conference.

“It’s a very different world than my own,” said Clay Barnett, who participated in the hunt.

While MISN organized the treasure hunt to function as a “creative disruption,” Barnett said he wasn’t out to antagonize. “I’m not an obtrusive person. I was in some ways just trying to understand the world that those people are inhabiting. I think I shook them up more by wearing my jeans than by asking my questions. They’re all wearing these suits… you know, the ‘I have money, so do you, let’s make more together’ look. That vibe is very strong. I don’t hate that. It’s interesting.”

On the floor at PDAC, the world’s largest mining conference. Photo by Caitrin Pilkington.

The hunt directives ranged from asking lighter questions to more challenging, complex inquiries. “I think the most fucked up thing isn’t what is seen here, but what is absent,” said Emily Green, collective member of MISN. “For example, there was a big spill last year, [but the company involved] is not here this year. One of the questions in our treasure hunt is to look for a mention of that oil spill. And it’s a trick question, because you will not find that anywhere.”

But why use a treasure hunt to push these issues to the fore?

“Public actions can become empty rituals,” says Green. “In our four years of attending PDAC, our strategy has included rallies, but we don’t want to default into an activism ‘formula.’ We want to think strategically about what our goals are.”

The questions were an invitation to consider the challenges of those impacted by the mining industry, and show that people are paying attention.

Emmet McAleer is from Greencastle, Ireland, a place officially designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It’s ecologically unique, home to rare species such as the parrot mussel. It’s also soon to be affected by a major gold mine project. McAleer travelled from Ireland to the PDAC out of his own pocket. He explained that the cyanide processing plant and waste dump for the project will be located less than a kilometre from his community’s local primary school and playground.

He strongly disagrees with widely touted notion that mining benefits the areas where it happens. “The financial rewards will go almost exclusively to this company. There’s a small tax that will go to the Queen, but almost nothing that will go back into the local economy,” he said.

“We’ll be left with this wasteland. This toxic dump. We’re a place with a lot of rural agriculture, a lot of families. It will be a massive threat to our way of life if this company is allowed to come in and do what they want here. It’s frustrating when you’re arguing a point that feels so clear, to be made to feel like your worries mean nothing.”

It was easy to get the sense at PDAC that not all mining offences come as a result of outright cruelty, but a lot of ignorance. An executive involved in a mine in Ecuador said in a talk: “We arrive in these places where there’s nothing but trees. We leave with fully functional mines and business opportunities. And that’s something I feel good about.” He smiled, nodded, and stepped down to rapturous applause.

The treasure hunt felt like a powerful way to ask the questions affected communities want asked, and include their voices in a place where their worries are too-often disregarded, overlooked, and explained away. In places where the truth can feel so different depending on who you ask, the most important thing we can do is to keep asking the questions.

In the fall of 2016, an inmate spoke to Renu Mandhane through a small hole in the glass at a provincial jail in Thunder Bay, Ont. He told her he had been in segregation, or solitary confinement, awaiting trial for more than four years.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission and Mandhane, the chief commissioner, brought national attention the case of Adam Capay, and the segregation of Indigenous people and those with mental health challenges inside provincial jails. We spoke with Mandhane about why this is happening and the Commission’s call on provincial jails to end solitary confinement.

How is someone suffering from mental health issues more susceptible to being segregated?

With the closing of big mental health residential facilities in in the 1980s and ’90s, we didn’t see a creation of appropriate community support to address the needs of those people who are no longer being held there. Those people are at more risk of being criminalized. So, a large proportion of prisoners—I think it’s somewhere around 40 percent—are identified as having mental health issues and disabilities. And then, of course, the institutional environment often exacerbates those issues.

Just as an example, Thunder Bay Jail has a psychiatrist come in twice a month to deal with a jail with a capacity of 130. So people who have complex mental health disabilities are not getting the support they need, or even the support they may have been getting in the community. Those people may feel vulnerable, and either ask to be segregated or are segregated because their behaviour is perceived as creating a risk to themselves or the institution.

Are Indigenous people more susceptible to segregation?

Again, we don’t have [the] data. We know that’s true in federal jails so that’s a strong indicator that it would be the case provincially. But, Indigenous people are overrepresented in the entire criminal justice system—they are over-policed and [represent] a higher population of the prison population—and so are more susceptible to being placed in segregation.

Many Indigenous people are also housed in facilities in the north, more than southern Ontario, and that means their proximity to treatment centres is much farther. It requires them to really give up family support if they want to transfer to that kind of institution. Many of their lawyers will also be in Toronto or Winnipeg, so they aren’t there on a day-to-day basis to see the conditions of confinement or advocate for their clients. I think the issue of the impact on Indigenous people also can’t be divorced from the geographic isolation of the places they find themselves in.

What was the Commission hoping for when you came out with the information about Capay?

I like to pause and reflect on success obviously. There was, since the revelation of Capay’s case, an investment of approximately $55 million in the criminal justice system to deal with some of the systemic issues. There was also a commitment to hire hundreds of staff in correctional facilities to address the issue and some measure to implement more oversight.

That said, we know that one other individual died by suicide at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre in segregation who had schizophrenia, and we know that another individual has died under, for lack of a better word, suspicious circumstances, at the Central East Correctional Centre. So we’re not going to be satisfied until—you know, setting the bar really low—people stop dying.

What are other options aside from segregation?

Segregation is relatively cheap in the short term. As long as you have a specialized cell, it doesn’t really cost you that much money. The kinds of solutions that we think need to be implemented are more costly in the short term—things like having mental health treatment plans for prisoners, having support readily available, and expanding on the number of beds for people with complex disabilities.

But I also think we need to look beyond prisons and jails, and start thinking about what kind of supports we could have in the community from the Ministry of Health perspective that would actually triage some of these people out of criminalization. People say it’s impossible to phase out segregation, I think it’s impossible for individual jails. I don’t think it’s impossible for the system. I think alternatives cost money, but it’s very expensive to jail people in the first place. And ultimately, those people will re-enter society, the vast majority of them, and it’s in our interest as a society to have a system that produces people who are rehabilitated.

Do you think it’s important for the public to care about issues like these?

Absolutely. This is a system that’s neglected mostly because there are no political points to be won by investing in the criminal justice system. These aren’t stakeholder populations that tend to vote.

I think what spurred the provincial government to act after Capay’s case was surely the situation of his case, but also that the public demanded action. We can say something is human rights abuse, but it really only has the power to persuade politicians if the public echoes those concerns.

Photo courtesy of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

The United Nations has declared this month Human Rights Month, with December 10 marking Human Rights Day. Consider it perfect timing: JayU’s fifth-annual human rights film festival kicks off tonight in Toronto, celebrating and visualizing human rights through 12 thought-provoking documentaries.

JayU founder and executive director Gilad Cohen says the program this year is especially holistic and representative of current issues getting coverage in the news, such as immigration, the refugee experience, homelessness, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights.

“We’re seeing a lot of talk lately about immigration and undocumented people, and we tend to think a lot of times this is affecting people in the U.S.,” Cohen says. “I’m excited for tonight to be able to turn that conversation into a local one and speak to someone who has been dealing with those challenges here at home.”

Specifically, the festival is premiering two films that deal with undocumented people and immigration: the Canadian premiere of Don’t Tell Anyone and the world premiere of Stateless, which focuses on a Canadian-born man who lost his citizenship after it was revoked by the government four years ago.

Cohen says attendees can look forward to films that talk about mental health in a more unconventional way. He recommends the film Prison Dogs, which tells the story of New York inmates that train puppies to become service dogs that are then handed over to war veterans suffering from PTSD.

In an effort to diffuse the heavy subject matter that comes with human rights issues and counter those feelings, each screening ends with a Q-and-A that Cohen says he hopes ensures people aren’t leaving the cinema depressed or overwhelmed in the safe space of the cinema, and that people can debrief together.

JayU has also partnered up with over 15 community organizations that will be present at the festival and have been chosen alongside films that deal with similar challenges, such as the AIDS Committee of York Region, Horizons for Youth, and Lifeline Syria.

“I hope that people walk away inspired,” Cohen says. “What we’re hoping is that people take what they feel after the film and take the time to speak to some of these community partners and find ways to contribute to some of the solutions that are already happening here in the city.”

If you go: The festival takes place this weekend, opening tonight at 6 p.m. Tickets are as low as $10 and all access passes are available for $30.

Also in this issue: Amanda Van Slyke asks “Is welfare sexist?” in her new essay; Nadia Alam contemplates what it’s like to run away from home; Lisa Whittington-Hill hangs out with the Hervana; Saskatchewan makes huge strides forward in transgender rights; and more!

Want This Magazine delivered right to your door? Visit this.org/subscribe today. You can get one year (six great issues!) for only $27.99 or two years for $42.99 (an even better deal)!

Also, head on over here to meet our new art director Valerie Thai.

Cover illustration by Nick Craine

WHEN MAURINA BEADLE WAS CARRYING HER SECOND CHILD 20 years ago, the doctors told her she should terminate her pregnancy. The fetus was showing signs of hydrocephalus, also known as “water on the brain.” As excess fluid builds up in the brain, it places abnormal amounts of pressure and stress on important regions, and can cause varying degrees of brain damage, including mental retardation, different forms of motor disability, cerebral palsy, and death. It didn’t dissuade Beadle. She gave birth to her son, Jeremy Meawasige, on December 9, 1994.

The doctors were right. Jeremy was eventually diagnosed with hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, spinal curvature, and severe autism. He has required around-the-clock care since birth. He can’t walk on his own without the support of others, he can’t eat on his own, he is incontinent and needs to wear a diaper, and he isn’t able to speak or write. He has very limited means to communicate with others, and he doesn’t make eye contact with people he doesn’t know. Only those who are close to him, like his mother, can understand what he wants or needs from the sounds and movements he makes.

“When Jeremy slept,” says Beadle, “that’s when I took a sleep. Whenever he was awake, I was awake with him. And if he fell asleep in my arms, then I would fall asleep too.” Sometimes, he’s self-abusive. Once, when he was about 15, he repeatedly smashed his head against the wall so hard that he was in a coma for four days. Beadle says he looked like Sylvester Stallone coming out of a boxing match. The doctors told her they would have to drill a hole into his head to release the fluid build-up resulting from the trauma. Luckily, as they were preparing the operating room, Jeremy woke up from his coma, narrowly dodging the invasive surgery. Beadle also has another son, Jonavon, six years older than Jeremy. But taking care of her second son has been her full-time job since the day he was born.

While Jeremy was growing up, the family didn’t spend much time at home, not even during Christmas holidays. He was often ill and was hospitalized numerous times—too many to count. Beadle can’t remember going longer than one month between hospital trips. Jeremy’s immune system is extremely weak. When he catches something (a bacterium or virus that a healthy child could easily fight off) it could turn serious, requiring a hospital stay or even surgery. His shunt system, put in place to treat his hydrocephalus, is largely to blame. The long tube transfers the excess fluid in his brain to his abdominal cavity where it can be properly absorbed. An infection could travel to the shunt tubing, infecting it too. When this happens, surgeons have to remove the old shunt, clear the infection using antibiotics, and then put in a new shunt.

Every day, Beadle has to help Jeremy dress, shower, change diapers, and spoon feed him his meals. She also has to keep a vigilant eye on him to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. She spends a lot of time singing with him, which she says is the one thing that always makes him smile and laugh. It has never been easy. Beadle and her two sons live on Pictou Landing First Nation reserve, a two-hour drive from the hospital in Halifax, called the IWK Health Centre. Beadle always took Jonavon with her on the long trips, both of them sleeping in a cot beside Jeremy during the extended hospital stays. In those early days, Beadle tried to get part-time help to take care of him. She would write to the local health centres to ask for support and fill out all the necessary forms, but help never came. Eventually, Beadle gave up hope. She carried on, as a single mother of two, doing the best she could to keep her sons happy and safe.

But everything changed in May 2010. At the age of 50, Beadle suffered a stroke that left half of her brain damaged. The doctors told her she might not be able to walk again, nor regain full movement on her right side. Beadle felt helpless, but was determined. She would walk again. And she did. She walked out of the rehabilitation facility and returned home after a month of hospitalization. But when she returned, she quickly realized she was not able to provide the care Jeremy needed while still recovering from her stroke. It was hard for both of them to accept. “He wanted me to snuggle with him and cuddle with him,” she says, “and I wasn’t able to do that.”

She needed help. But as an Aboriginal family living on a reserve, help was hard to get.

IF BEADLE AND HER FAMILY DIDN’T LIVE ON A RESERVE, GETTING home care and caregiving support would be a much easier process. She could have reached out to her provincial Disability Support Program. From there, the provincial program would do an assessment of their needs, and then provide the necessary financial support. As far as hassles go, it would only be a small one—and more importantly, there would be scant delay between contacting the program and receiving support.

Things are a lot more complicated when a person lives on a reserve. The federal government, rather than the provincial government, funds health and social services on reserves. The federal government provides funding through block contribution agreements to a reserve’s band council, which is the elected government of a particular First Nation—in Beadle’s case, the Pictou Landing First Nation.
The band council then decides how the money is spent. In theory, the band council is supposed to receive enough funding to provide care and services at a level similar to what is available to off-reserve residents in the same province. But problems arise when there simply isn’t enough money in the budget.

The person in charge of delivering health care services on Pictou Landing First Nation reserve is Philippa Pictou, the health director. When she found out about Beadle and Jeremy’s situation, she insisted he receive daily at-home care immediately, even though she knew it would quickly eat up the entire health budget. She hoped there would be a way to obtain extra funding and, in the meantime, asked the province of Nova Scotia to send a nurse to perform an assessment—she wanted to know what level of care the family would receive if they lived off-reserve. The assessment was performed in October 2010, after which Beadle’s 24/7-hour care was reduced to 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m during the week, and 24-hour care over the weekend. The care services still cost about $8,200 per month, nearly 80 percent of the band council’s entire monthly budget for personal and home care services. For a small reserve of 600 members, it was unsustainable.

Pictou asked the two federal departments responsible for funding home care, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and Health Canada, to top up the band’s funding. But both departments denied her request and told her it was up to the band to properly budget for the extra costs. “It became clear,” says Pictou, “that Jeremy was already starting to get treated differently than if he was living off-reserve.” In 2012, Beadle and the Pictou Landing Band Council took the federal government to court, demanding the right to be treated equally and to receive the services band members needed—and deserved.

The decision to fight the federal government was easy for Beadle. She knew it was the right thing to do, not just for herself and her son, but also for all the First Nations children across Canada. And, it wasn’t just about equal treatment of children on- and off-reserve. Jeremy’s case connected to a wider issue that’s deeply gutted First Nations communities across Canada: the forced removal of First Nations children from their homes and communities, often as a direct result of low funding and services on reserve. The battle was going to set a legal precedent one way or another.

If Beadle and the band council won, it would give First Nations families a better chance in the future to access services at a level equal to their off-reserve counterparts. More children would be able to stay at home, instead of given up to foster care or institutions. If the federal government won, it meant current funding agreements with First Nations communities didn’t need to allow for exceptional circumstances that warranted additional funding. Everything would remain the same—if not worse—for First Nations families.

BEADLE SPEAKS WITH A SOFT YET EXCITED VOICE. SHE ISN’T ONE TO dominate a conversation. Her home on the reserve is a small, minimally-furnished bungalow, which she shares with both her sons. When I visited her, it was during the dead of winter in February, just ahead of a massive snowstorm. Everything seemed a little dreary. Houses on the reserve are spaced far apart—not like in wealthier Canadian neighbourhoods, where the space is for meticulously landscaped yards and gardens, but haphazardly, with unplowed snow-covered roads connecting them. Life is generally quiet for Beadle and her family, especially during the winter months. Going outside meant risking infections for Jeremy. The only time Beadle stepped outside the day I was there was to huddle in front of her door to smoke a quick cigarette.

The events post-stroke, she tells me, disrupted her family’s life, but also put a strain on the entire community. While looking for a way to relieve that strain, Beadle and Pictou discovered Jordan’s Principle. A child-first principle adopted by the House of Commons in a unanimous vote in 2007, its intention is to ensure jurisdictional disputes don’t cause First Nations children to experience delays, disruptions or denial of services available to other children. The principle is named after Jordan River Anderson, who was born in October 1999 on Manitoba’s Norway House Cree Nation reserve. Thanks to an extremely rare neuromuscular disorder called Carey-Fineman-Ziter Syndrome, Jordan spent the first two years of his life in a Winnipeg hospital, 800 kilometres away from his home. When he was two years old, the doctors decided he was ready to leave the hospital, provided he had special home-care services.

This led to a long fight between the provincial and federal governments over which was on the hook for the bill. They argued over high-cost items, such as home renovation needed for installing a wheelchair ramp, to very low-cost items, like a showerhead. The dispute lasted for over two years until 2005, when Jordan died in the hospital at five years old, having never spent a single day at home with his family. If Jordan were a child living off-reserve, the province would have immediately covered the costs to provide home-care for him.

The sad reality is, Jordan’s situation—like Jeremy’s—is not unique. In the same year Jordan died, a First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada report found that across 12 First Nations child welfare agencies in Canada, 393 children faced denied or delayed services because of jurisdictional disputes. And, that’s just the tally from a handful of agencies—there are 108 in Canada. They’re all services that would be readily available to an off-reserve child. Jordan’s Principle was designed to stop the disparity. When the private member’s motion to adopt the principle was introduced, there was very little debate. Everyone agreed what happened to Jordan shouldn’t happen again. Before the vote, Conservative MP Steven Blaney, who spoke on behalf of the Conservative government, told the House that the feds were already working hard to “transform the commitment we make here today into a fact of daily life for First Nations parents and their children.”

Yet in 2011, four years after the historic vote, neither Beadle nor Pictou could find a single successful application of the principle in Canada. It seemed clear to them that Jordan’s Principle should apply to—and, therefore, help—Jeremy. Under it, the first governmental department a family approaches should foot the bill for necessary and eligible care and services. If the principle had been properly implemented in Jeremy’s situation, the provincial government should have provided services immediately after its nurse’s assessment of the family. It could negotiate with the federal government over costs and reimbursement later, on its own, in the background.

Devastatingly, after many meetings with provincial and federal officials to discuss Jeremy’s case, the federal official in charge of implementing Jordan’s Principle in Atlantic Canada decided it didn’t apply. Both the province and the federal government agreed the amount of care requested exceeded the provincial normative standard of care, a maximum of $2,200 per month. Thus, since the two governments weren’t technically in dispute, it wasn’t a Jordan’s Principle case—help hinged on the two governments battling over costs. As an alternative, the governments suggested Beadle place Jeremy into a longterm institutional care facility. They promised all the costs of his care would be fully covered by either the federal or provincial government. The estimated daily cost of institutionalized care for Jeremy was $350 per day. The cost to keep Jeremy at home was roughly $270 per day. Beadle was horrified. It felt like the government would rather spend more money to take Jeremy away than to spend less to help her keep him home. There was no way she would give up her son. Court was her last chance to save him—and to broaden Jordan’s Principle so it could finally help children on reserves.

AT THE END OF MARCH 2011, THE NOVA SCOTIA SUPREME COURT ruled on a case similar to Beadle’s. It involved a Nova Scotia off-reserve resident named Brian Boudreau who required 24-hour care. Unfortunately, his in-home care was capped at $2,200 per month—the same cap Jeremy faced. Boudreau was fighting to have the funding cap abolished. In the end, a judge ruled in favour of Boudreau, finding the monthly cap unlawful. The judge ruled the cap contravened the Nova Scotia Social Assistance Act, as well as the province’s Direct Family Support Policy from 2006, which specifically states that funding exceeding $2,200 per month may be granted in “exceptional circumstances.”

When Pictou heard about Boudreau’s win on the radio, she believed she’d found the smoking gun she needed to get Jeremy’s care covered. She shared the Boudreau decision with the federal official in charge of Jeremy’s files, but the government still insisted Jordan’s Principle didn’t apply. Unwilling to give up, Pictou contacted Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. She thought maybe Blackstock, who has been at the forefront of advocating for Jordan’s Principle since 2005, could suggest options. Certainly, Blackstock was outraged. How could a government deny Jeremy the care and support he needed to stay at home with his mother, but willingly offer a more expensive solution to institutionalize him? “That just doesn’t make sense to me at all,” says Blackstock. “I can’t square that circle.”

She’s spent the last decade working to close the gap between what children get on- versus off-reserve. For Blackstock, the government’s failure to properly implement Jordan’s Principle is a symptom of a much greater problem facing First Nations children across Canada. Prior to her current role, Blackstock was a child protection worker on- and off-reserve in B.C. During that time, she became exceedingly aware of the differences in care and services available to the children on either side of a reserve line. She felt it wasn’t a problem of remoteness, but systemic racism against First Nations. After all, inequality existed even in First Nations reserves near big cities. “Just stepping across that imaginary line was like going thousands and thousands of miles away,” she says, referencing a Squamish First Nation reserve close to North Vancouver. “I could not believe how restrictive the services were.”

This belief has led to her own legal battle. In February 2007, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations launched a human rights complaint against the federal government. It’s the first time in history a country has been held accountable for its present day actions towards an Indigenous population. The complaint alleged the Canadian government discriminates against First Nations children like Jordan and Jeremy by providing them with less child welfare funding than other children in the country. The government’s own documents estimate the funding gap between on- and off-reserve child welfare services is at anywhere between 22–34 percent. Hearings for the case took place in front of a three-person panel at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and concluded in October 2014.

At the crux of the tribunal hearings: that the Canadian government provided flawed and unequal services to First Nations children, and that it failed to implement Jordan’s Principle. The ripple effect, argued Blackstock and her allies, meant First Nations families were often forced to surrender their children to foster care or institutions. First Nations children are 12 times more likely to be placed in foster care than non-Indigenous children. They account for 30–40 percent of all Canadian children in child welfare care, even though they make up only five percent of the Canadian child population. What Blackstock wanted was the same thing Beadle wanted: the right and ability to keep First Nations children at home and in their communities.

In the end, Beadle’s case reached its conclusion before Blackstock’s. After spending $300,000 to win its case, the federal government lost. The court ruled in favour of Beadle and the band council in April 2013. The judge agreed with Beadle that the federal government made the wrong judgement on Jeremy’s case, and that Jordan’s Principle did apply. The provincial government, as dictated by the Social Assistance Act, would, in fact, have to cover Jeremy’s care costs if he lived off-reserve. And thus, the federal government should cover those costs to ensure equality for First Nations children living on a reserve. The court ordered the federal government to reimburse the band council for all legal costs, the fees for the services Jeremy had been receiving since Beadle suffered her stroke, and to cover all future costs related to his care.

It was the first time Jordan’s Principle was successfully applied in Canada. And the only time. The Canadian government has made it virtually impossible for families to apply for Jordan’s Principle. First, a narrow definition of qualification exists. A child must have multiple complex health care needs—not just one or two, but many. Second, there’s still the sticking issue of what constitutes a dispute and who it is that must be feuding. That is, if two federal departments, like Health Canada and Indigenous Affairs, couldn’t agree over which should cover the costs of a service, the principle would not apply. And finally, there is just too much red tape to access services using the principle. Even though Beadle won against the government and now has the support she needs to keep Jeremy home, she knows the fight isn’t over. She thinks about how Jordan River Anderson died and knows that he is dead because the principle that’s his namesake didn’t exist when he was alive. She wonders if it would have helped him even if it did.

AFTER SEVEN YEARS AND NUMEROUS EMOTIONAL TESTIMONIES across Canada, the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission published an executive summary of its final report in June 2015. Number one on its list of calls-to-action was to reduce the number of Aboriginal children in care. Number three was to fully implement Jordan’s Principle. The statement was clear: the inequality faced by children and families living on reserves today perpetuates the horrific legacy of Indian Residential Schools.

Seven months following its release, at the end of nine long years and more than $5-million later, the Human Rights Tribunal also released its ruling on Blackstock’s case. On January 26, 2016, it found the Canadian government racially discriminated against 163,000 First Nations children. It ordered the government to reform its First Nations Child and Family Services program so that its child and family welfare agencies are provided with the same level of funding and resources as its provincial counterparts. It also ordered the government to “cease applying its narrow definition of Jordan’s Principle” and “immediately implement the full meaning and scope of Jordan’s Principle.”

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett spoke to reporters the day the Tribunal released its decision. She said her department will move quickly to start coming up with solutions and, in doing so, will be working closely with First Nations communities and the Assembly of First Nations. She also said there will be a proper needs assessment done in order to determine how much money is required to reform First Nations child-welfare programs. “My job,” she told media, “is to go forward and fix these things.”

This is the news that Blackstock, Beadle, and all the other advocates for First Nations children across the country have been waiting for—a wait that has spanned decades, and involved years of hard work. Yet, although there has been a lot of excitement rippling through First Nations communities across Canada, it has been accompanied by a certain level of skepticism. It will take years to tell whether the ruling will actually change the realities of First Nations children and families. If it does, Canadians should see the number of First Nations children in foster care or institutions fall to a level that is proportionate to their population size.

Recognition of the government’s discriminatory policies against First Nations children alone does not create change. The government can continue to make apology after apology for its treatment of First Nations children, but that also does not lead to positive change. It will take proactive action and continual pressure on governments to make the changes First Nations children need. After spending so many years battling with the government, Blackstock knows this all too well. She knows the road ahead will not be a straightforward one. But she has a clear vision for the future that she will give everything she has to attain: “I want to see a generation of First Nations children that don’t have to recover from their childhoods, and I want to see a generation of non-Aboriginal children who grow up healthy and proud, and never have to say sorry for the treatment of First Nations kids again.”

I’m here—I hope—to meet Anawa, a Cameroonian mother in indefinite detention, and her son, who was born in the facility. Alpha must stay with his mother at all times, even when she’s in the shower. While she carries his weight, she must also live knowing that her daughter, Tracy, not yet 10, is growing up without her in Nigeria. Anawa is imprisoned for a simple, all-too-common reason: coming here, to Canada. She hasn’t been charged with a crime and has not had a trial. She’s held because Cameroon won’t issue travel documents for deportation and Canada will not set her free for apparent fear she’ll disappear.

Anawa’s story is as much a national tragedy as it is the result of a decade of degradation in the manner in which Canada treats those people who flee oppressive circumstance in hope of refuge. A system that—over the past nine years under the federal Conservative government—has gone from bad to worse. It’s the result of policy that continually seeks to remove basic rights to those our federal government considers outsiders. It’s thanks to a persistent messaging campaign to brand people as undesirable—or worse, criminal. Today, the walls of detention centres like the one in Rexdale act to hide the mistreatment of the disenfranchised and promote a culture of fear. A culture that often prevents the mistreated from speaking about their experiences with the media, or anyone.

So I wait.

IT’S A STICKY DAY in early May, and I’m sitting in a slowlyfilling courtroom at the Ontario Court of Appeals. I’m here to watch as the End Immigration Detention Network (EIDN) and a team of lawyers appeal a ruling denying habeas corpus to immigrants in detention. Basically, they want the court to prove that indefinite detention is justified. Even for the experts, the legal framework proves difficult to navigate. “I don’t know every section [of immigration code] anymore,” one of Anawa’s lawyers tells the court. “I used to know it all, but it’s been amended so much I just can’t keep up.”

IF THERE’S BEEN one constant since Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party came to power, it’s change. Policy has changed rapidly and seemingly at random, with the consistent misdirection acting as an obstacle for immigration lawyers and experts. “Every month is a change,” says Loly Rico, the president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, “and every month is a cut.”

In nearly a decade of conservative power, Canada has gained an abysmal record in caring for those seeking asylum—the most egregious of which is arguably our country’s new and unusual habit of indefinitely detaining refugee and immigration claimants without providing any documentation as to why. In fact, in July the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report chastised Canada for this very practice.

Take Anawa’s case. Facing female genital mutilation, she fled Cameroon to Finland, then to the U.K. and, eventually, to Canada. By that time, she was pregnant with Alpha. Lacking official documentation and identification, upon arrival she was put in the detention centre where she and Alpha now live. She has no release date.

Laced through the policy upheaval is also a shift in the tone in which Canada speaks about refugees. This government is openly hostile, introducing terms like “bogus claimants” and “abusing our generosity” to the public lexicon. Rico, once a refugee herself, says “[Refugees] are not coming because of what we have. They’re coming because they need protection.” Syed Hussan of the EIDN echoes that statement: “The idea that Canada, or any international agency, gets to decide who is and who is not worthy of safety is absurd.”

Stripping a claimant’s humanity with such language allows abuses of power to slip by—and become a norm. Anawa’s lawyer, Swathi Sekhari, worries whenever a client speaks to the media. “The [Canadian Border Services Agency] can be quite subversive with their actions,” she says, “I would say even violent.” Guards can punish detainees for speaking out—either in the yard with verbal abuse or, at times, in detention reviews. “All of a sudden you can be declared as being uncooperative,” she adds.

MANY TYPES OF IMMIGRATION have felt the effects of structural decay—including migrant workers and caregivers. Hussan, who’s also with the organization No One Is Illegal, says that to focus on one stream or another is to confuse the problem. “People are just people trying to move,” he says. When people are fleeing oppression their only concern is getting out, and they will choose the path they think is most likely to help. Each stream has its own pitfalls. Migrant workers, for example, don’t have their housing covered under workplace safety laws even though they’re forced to live where they work.

I’M STARTING TO REALIZE I won’t get to speak to Anawa. It’s my third time visiting the detention centre—a place that, in anything but name, is a prison. While I sit on this side of the glass, she’s being herded back from lunch where Alpha may have been playing with a new friend. He has to make new friends a lot. Most of them move out eventually, into a world he doesn’t understand. Each time I’ve gone I’ve seen her warm, welcoming face and his unbridled pent-up energy as he bounds around the visitation area. She corrals him as she tells me she can’t talk. Not today. I’ve been waiting a while, but at least I get to drive home after. For the time being, she’s already there.

Later, in 2010, Harper’s position softened, but only slightly. Amidst public pressure, particularly from aboriginal leaders, Canada signed a letter of support for the declaration— even though the government remained wary of its contents. This fact was reiterated in 2014 when Canada was the only country to raise objections over the declaration’s outcome document, meant to provide a framework for countries to follow and set minimum rights standards. The feds said they worried the document could provide “veto” power to aboriginal groups, despite the fact that the word veto isn’t even used in the document. Equally disappointing, it also called the agreement an “aspirational” document, suggesting it wasn’t achievable—or, at least, that the government had no concrete plans to do so.

Perhaps such sentiments shouldn’t come as a surprise. Under Harper, the federal government has also consistently chosen industry over aboriginal interest (see: the much-protested Northern Gateway Pipeline, for example); eliminated First Nation Band and Tribal Council funding for advisory services, limiting the ability of councils to assess and analyze government legislation; drastically cut funding for First Nation political organizations; completely ignored pressing aboriginal issues such as the emergency state of Canada’s murdered and missing women; and missed meaningful opportunities for change, such as it did with its bungled communications (or rather lack thereof) with members of Idle No More, one of the most significant protest movements in Canada’s history.

No wonder, then, that in 2013 when James Anaya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples, visited Canada, he declared that we are facing a “crisis” when it comes to aboriginal rights. “Amidst this wealth and prosperity,” he said, “Aboriginal people live in conditions akin to those in countries that rank much lower and in which poverty abounds.” Not much has changed since—but, by now, such a change is long overdue.

Yet, at the same time, rights on paper don’t always translate into lived rights. And, despite our reputation as a supposed LGBTQ leader, Canada itself is still missing important on-paper rights. Over the past nine years, our federal government’s actions when it comes to LBGTQ rights have been inconsistent—even confounding.

Here in Canada, for instance, queer youth are grossly misrepresented amongst the homeless population, accounting for 25–40 percent. Members of the federal Conservative Party have also actively blocked the advancement of trans rights at home with endless delays of Bill C-279, which seeks to give transgender people basic Charter protections. The back-and-forth doesn’t stop there: The feds cut funding to gay organizations, such as the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network in 2012 and Pride Toronto in 2010—yet a 600-person gay Conservative party called Fabulous Blue Tent was thrown in 2011 to bring gay Conservatives together during the Party’s convention. That same weekend, the Tories passed a resolution supporting religious organizations’ refusal to perform same-sex marriages. Previously, in 2005, Harper had campaigned on the promise to repeal same-sex marriage.

And, it doesn’t stop there. Here, we examine the Conservatives sad, confusing track record:

TRANS RIGHTS
Within the Conservative Party, there are LGBTQsupportive caucus members, but they are in the minority, despite the now-biennial Fabulous Blue Tent party. When Bill C-279—to grant transgender Canadians equal protection under the law—passed through the House of Commons, only 18 of 155 Tory MPs voted in favour. Conservative MP Rob Anders called it a “bathroom bill,” insisting its goal was to give creepy men access to women’s washrooms. All other party MPs who voted were unanimously in support of C-279.

The bill is currently sitting in the Conservative-dominated Senate, and will almost surely be killed at election time—having to retrace its process through the House again. Now more than 10 years in the making, this would be the second time the bill was forced back to square one. Yet, if passed, it will give trans people legal recourse against things such as being fired and being denied housing, and will also make sky-high rates of violence punishable as hate crimes.

HARPER TRIES TO MOVE BACKWARDS
Opposing queer rights is nothing new for Harper. Early on in 1994, he fought plans to introduce same-sex spousal benefits in Canada. In 2005, after same-sex marriage was legalized, he promised to bring legislation defining marriage as “the union of one man and one woman.” When this plan was defeated shortly after his election, he decided to leave the issue alone, saying, “I don’t see reopening this question [of marriage] in the future.”

FUNDING CUTS
After more than 20 years of federal funding, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network faced cuts in 2012 because it “may have used the funds for advocacy.” After receiving a “significant portion of its funding from Ottawa” over its entire existence, the organization sought renewal of the same funding but the Public Health Agency of Canada rejected 16 of its 20 proposals.

In 2006, shortly after taking power, the Conservative Party also cut the entire budget of a program called Court Challenges, which had made public funds available for individuals launching human rights challenges in court. Used by those making challenges on the basis of sexual orientation and more, the fund had helped homosexual couples secure spousal benefits and achieve equality protection. Harper’s chief of staff from 2005-2008, Ian Brodie, used his PhD to argue the program unfairly empowered homosexuals and other minority groups. The Conservatives had killed the program in 1992 originally, only to have it revived by the Liberals. Now the Cons have resuscitated it, but with a narrowed focus on only linguistic minorities.

PROGRESS, PR, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
Canada’s immigration office under Harper worked with Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees to fast-track 100 gay Iranians into Canada, saving them from possible execution. Harper also personally lobbied Uganda’s president in 2009 over a law that would imprison gay people for life. Canada even gave $200,000 to Ugandan groups to fight the law. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has made repeated international public statements condemning countries that criminalize homosexuality, and during the 2014 Olympics Baird and Harper spoke out against the Russian “gay propaganda” law that makes it illegal for anyone to distribute gay rights materials.

Yet, speaking against the criminalization of LGBTQ people is not the same as active support. In regards to Russia in particular, Ontario Conservative MP Scott Reid, who chairs the Commons’ subcommittee on international human rights, said it’s an issue of freedom of speech. Saskatchewan Conservative backbencher Maurice Vellacott said he believes LGBTQ folks should have basic protections, but that he wouldn’t want his kids exposed to “homosexual propaganda.” These attitudes offer insight into the mixed messages of the Conservative Party when it comes to queer rights. Whatever its motives are for this dissonance, the fact remains there’s a lot of work to be done in this country before queer liberation becomes a reality.

Also problematic: In 2010, when the Conservatives cut the long-form census, they also nixed the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, better known by its acronym, PALS—those who received the survey were the same people who, on their census form, said they had a disability. PALS was used to track the needs of Canadians with disabilities, and looked at everything from rates of poverty, violence and abuse, to quality of housing, education and employment, and participation in community and civic activities. From there, government, but also more importantly advocacy groups, could use the data to better determine needed supports. The government has since introduced the Canadian Survey on Disability, but acknowledges that its data sets can’t be compared to PALS because of different questions and, notably, a different definition of the actual term “disability”—stunting a body of research. The new survey also received fewer responses, which advocates feared.

Perhaps that data could have been used to help the government figure out how to spend the near $40-million budget for the Opportunities Fund, a fund designed to help those prepare for, maintain or find employment. Unfortunately, in 2013-2014, the government failed to allocate one-quarter of its funding—undermining yet another promising initiative for those with disabilities.