Design by Valerie Thai

I am a non-binary Black queer femme survivor of sexual violence who has never gone to the police or engaged in a court process in order to seek justice and accountability. Every time that I have disclosed that I am indeed a survivor, I am seldom believed. Why would anyone do that to someone who is fat? Dark-skinned? Someone who looks like you? Why did you drink? What were you wearing? Why did you let this happen to you? These are some of the questions that have been asked to me by folks that I love and trust, so how could I entrust a system that does not even know me to believe my truth?

I went to law school with the aspiration to learn the law and then to use my acquired knowledge to develop the tools to transform it, because the current system, as it stands, is not designed to protect someone like me. While statistics on the rates of violence against Black women in Canada are not collected, movements like #MeToo, which was started by Tarana Burke, a Black woman, and #YouOkSis, which was initiated by Feminista Jones, also a Black woman, have illuminated the systemic anti-Black violence and misogynoir—anti-Black racist misogyny—that Black women and femmes experience all too often. And from the information that we do know and do collect, people who identify as queer, non-binary, trans, disabled and/or women, are more likely to experience sexual violence than those who do not. Moreover, according to the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics’s “Criminal victimization in Canada, 2019” report via Statistics Canada, they are most likely not to report because 25 percent of women feel they won’t be believed, 57 percent do not want to deal with the police, and 42 percent do not want to deal with the court process. So, the question remains: what are our options?

While in law school, I wrote a paper about making social context education mandatory in the courtroom. Social context education is “the social backdrop” of the issues and reasons why certain people enter the courtroom. That is to say, social context education recognizes that discrimination is not only individual, but institutional, systemic, and embedded in the law. When I wrote the paper in 2016, social context education for judges was not mandatory. It was simply at the discretion of a judge to take notice of an “ism” such as racism or sexism in the case before them. Throughout law school, I had read decision after decision where social context was not necessarily taken into consideration, and when it was, there were consequences.

In 1997, there was a case about a Black woman judge who was put on trial for acquitting a Black Nova Scotian boy accused of assaulting a white police officer. A Black woman judge who took notice of anti-Black racism in Nova Scotia was accused of having reasonable apprehension of bias. “Reasonable apprehension of bias” is a legal standard for disqualifying judges for bias whether it is real or perceived. For me, this case revealed a multiplicity of things. Regardless of attempts to characterize courtroom spaces as neutral and impartial, one can conclude that they are not. When we think about how spaces come to be, why spaces come to be, who controls the space, and who is controlled by the space, we know that spaces are certainly neither impartial nor neutral. “The double legacy of [this case] for me is that while it offers a small ray of light that race does count, it also confirmed that to make it count more often, we will need something more than a scientific study or two on the operation of racism in Canada,” writes Sherene Razack, a distinguished professor and chair in women’s studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose research and teaching focuses on racial violence.

As a law student, I started writing and co-writing about my observations of the legal profession on topics ranging from legal education to representation in the legal profession. Following the Ghomeshi verdict in 2016, I co-wrote an article titled “The Ghomeshi Verdict: Re-imagining How Future Sexual Assault Cases Are Heard,” where I proposed “a re-imagining of future sexual assault trials” in order to respond to the realities of sexual assault survivors, while also respecting the rights of an accused based on some of the comments made by Judge William B. Horkin in his 26-page decision. My view is that a reimagination is indeed possible since specialized courts such as integrative domestic violence courts already exist. As such, I thought that for those who chose to seek justice within the court system, then it would perhaps serve them well to be before a judge that had a critical understanding of sexual assault law and its intersection with factors such as race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, and so forth. This is because in sexual assault proceedings, harmful stereotypes are, and continue to be, thrust upon Black and Indigenous people without any critical analysis or understanding of the history and realities of colonization. In the case of Black women and femmes, stereotypes and assumptions that operate about accused Black men or white women survivors of sexual assault may not apply. As a result, this leaves us left in the background once again only to reveal the increasing need to apply a Black feminist lens and value to legal education, judicial notice, and testimony from subject-matter experts on sexualized violence against Black women, femmes, trans, and non-binary folks.

In May 2021, amendments were made to the Judges Act and the Criminal Code through Bill C-3, which has resulted in mandatory and continuous education for judges in sexual assault law and social context in order for there to be greater transparency in sexual assault decisions. According to a Government of Canada news release, these changes “will help ensure that the public has confidence that judges have the awareness, skills and knowledge of sexual assault law necessary to deal with cases in a manner that is respectful to sexual assault survivors and free from myths and stereotypes about sexual assault.” While long overdue and unclear of what that would look like in practice without access to the judicial education materials, the changes are supposed to signal the Government of Canada’s commitment to addressing a faulty system that has failed survivors in profound ways by treating survivors with “dignity and compassion.” And though the instinct is to be excited for this much needed legislative change, I am left with many questions.

What will this change mean for me, specifically, given my intersecting identities? I chose not to rely on the system to seek justice for many reasons and found other forms of accountability mechanisms in order to heal. In a piece that I wrote in 2020 for the WAVAW’s Rape Crisis Centre’s zine Recognition 2: Trans and Queer Writing on Sexual Harm, I noted that one of the reasons that justice for me operated outside of the legal system is because “to be Black and femme, adds a layer of oppression that is deeply rooted in anti-Black colonial history.” And because of this, how could I then trust that the colonial legal system would see me as anything more than a jezebel?

Transformative legal shifts will result from this bill if—and only if—we make space for what I call “movement judicial education,” which is education for judges that is attuned to what’s going on in the community. That is to say, space for judges to engage in a transformative legal education that keeps a pulse on movements like #YouOkSis, for instance, and have that inform their judicial reasoning in the courtroom. If not, this new legislative change will only serve to benefit the seemingly perfect victim in cases of sexual assault, again leaving Black women and femmes to fend for ourselves.

Photo by Czeska Dumali.

Nearly every day, Mark Marsolais-Nahwegahbow hears stories from Indigenous men and women that they’ve often never told. The exchange usually begins at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, within which Indigenous people accused of various crimes are awaiting trial. Their stories are turned into a Gladue report, a document that outlines their personal history and how they were affected by decades of colonial oppression. When put in front of a judge, the hoped-for outcome for many offenders is a shorter sentence with a focus on rehabilitation rather than incarceration.

Marsolais-Nahwegahbow, an Ojibway Band Member from Whitefish River First Nation, has spent the past 25 years working in the criminal justice system, seeking ways to reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons. In 2015, he founded IndiGenius & Associates, an Ottawa-based justice consulting firm that provides Gladue reports to people facing a loss of liberty, and training Gladue writers in the process. For Marsolais-Nahwegahbow, a Gladue report is more than just a court document. It’s a person’s sacred story—peeling back the layers of family history and lingering intergenerational trauma, revealing a past that a court would have otherwise never known.

“It’s very important,” says Marsolais-Nahwegahbow. “It’s so the courts can understand why that person, to this day, possibly got involved with drugs and alcohol—because that’s all they ever knew in their life.”

Gladue reports came out of a 1999 Supreme Court ruling in R. v. Gladue, which required judges to factor into their rulings Indigenous people’s experiences as a result of colonization, in an attempt to end their over-incarceration in Canadian prisons. But nearly 20 years later, Indigenous people in Canada make up almost 24 percent of all inmates in federal prisons—up 43 percent since 2005—despite representing just four percent of the Canadian population. Those stats skew higher in some prisons, including Manitoba’s Stony Mountain Institution where Indigenous men make up 65 percent of inmates. At the Edmonton Institution for Women, Indigenous women make up 56 percent of the inmate population, while representing 33 percent of all female inmates in federal prisons. The mass incarceration of Indigenous people, along with Canada’s history of residential schools and the ongoing child welfare crisis, means that many will spend a lifetime in some form of government institution.

After years on the frontlines of the justice system, Marsolais-Nahwegahbow knows this crisis all too well. Before transitioning to Gladue writing, he was a justice coordinator at the Odawa Native Friendship Centre and he continues to work as a residential school crisis intervention counsellor for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

Through his work, it became clear how lacking Gladue services were in Canada. But convinced Gladue reports could work if implemented properly, Marsolais-Nahwegahbow set out to improve services within the court system, and even wrote his first few reports for free. Before he and his team, there were no Gladue writers in Ottawa, and he says it’s a practice that still remains largely neglected throughout Canada.

“The justice system I think is very closed-minded and that’s not to say that there aren’t people out there that respect the Gladue, but in some areas, they can’t be bothered,” he says.

That’s why, in 2012, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Gladue rights for Indigenous offenders in the case of R. v. Ipeelee. But lack of awareness around Gladue reports remains a systemic barrier for Indigenous people, and many courts have failed to make Gladue reports accessible, even after the 2012 reinforcement of Gladue rights. “I’ve dealt with cases where people have been in jail for eight months and they never even knew of their Gladue rights because nobody ever told them,” says Marsolais-Nahwegahbow.

In April, IndiGenius & Associates announced a partnership with Vancouver Community College to launch a Gladue report writing program, a first for colleges in Canada. “There’s a huge need for well-trained Gladue writers right across Canada— in each district, in each region, it needs to be done,” Marsolais-Nahwegahbow says. There’s also a need, on the part of the courts, to take Gladue reports seriously. When it’s all said and done, and the report is placed in front of some judges, Marsolais-Nahwegahbow says, it’s often ignored and tossed to the side.

Marsolais-Nahwegahbow knew when he started IndiGenius that it would be an uphill battle. Fortunately, he has the endurance to keep fighting. “It’s the need for change,” he says. “I have to be a voice for the people that can’t have a voice.”

How did the legal system come about?

The civil court has always been the elected council, falling under the Indian Act. But the people said: well what about Akwesasne laws? We have 33 laws on the books that include the needs of the community. The community said they want a court law to fall back on but more particular to what our practices are here, so the Council decided to use Mohawk values along with Canadian ideals in order to create the laws.

What makes it different than in the past?

It was ratified by the community itself. It is not under any Canadian statute. The people appointed to the court, the justices especially, aren’t through any statute or law of the Canadian government, making it very unique. The Council used their customary rules and created the court so that it meets the needs of the community.

What kinds of things does the court deal with? 

Often traffic law or peace bonds: we’re calling them skén:nen orders (skén:nen means peace). It also deals with tobacco regulations, sanitation, property, and wildlife conservation laws. Criminal matters are still settled in federal or provincial courts.

Do you have any stories from court you can share that illustrate the council’s way of handling violations?

One person was coming in for a traffic violation because he was driving without a licence. Instead of giving him a fine, the court worked with him and ordered him to get his driver’s licence, which is a solution I don’t think anyone else can say they would give. But here, you get your licence and if everything’s well then that violation will be lifted and things are put back in balance with the community, because then you have somebody who can legally drive and follow the rules of the road.

How were disputes handled beforehand?

Well it stems back from how we used to resolve disputes before. You would make sure there was a balance in the community. If somebody did something wrong, you ask: what would it take to rectify the situation? In Canadian law, you have your list of offences and your list of penalties. There’s hardly any room to maneuver, to say: you know, we need to send this person to rehabilitation. For example, if you’re caught shoplifting you pay a fine, but here if you’re caught shoplifting, we ask: what’s behind it? Is it an addiction problem? Is it you need food for your family? The court can inspect these things and see what we can do to make this person better.

How did these types of resolutions work traditionally?

In the community we always had a way of resolving disputes. You didn’t need a judge to tell you how to fix things. In our community, you would talk to the neighbours and see what they can do to resolve it. If they have to come to court, then how can we resolve it for the community? It all follows restorative justice practices, and I think that’s a better practice than somebody just getting a fine and you’re on your merry way until you get caught again.

What does this mean for the community?

Well they’ve always wanted it. We wanted to be able to use our people we want to be able to use our practices. We want to resolve our disputes internally and and be able to work with the families and with the offender to resolve our issues rather than it go outside.

What are your hopes for the outcomes of this new legal system?

We hope things are different because we want to be able to incorporate that sense of security in the community. Meaning that when people go to court, their issues will be addressed. I’ll give you an example: Imagine a person who might have written graffiti on the wall at a school—he would be given a $50 fine. But here, the Justice can say, “I know you’re a good lacrosse player, why don’t you teach the kids that go to that school lacrosse?” So that person will start building a relationship with the children and when he walks to the school to teach them he will see the graffiti and realize what they are seeing every day. So hopefully there’s some responsibility and the person will realize they did something wrong to those children. There are about 12,000 people in the community so we know the families here pretty well. If someone is trying to say something like, “My parents don’t care,” then the Justice will say, “I know your parents and they do care.” We’re small enough so that we know everyone and their situation and that will only make the system better.

This year, the 30-year-old took a leap of faith and enrolled in the University of Victoria in B.C. to pursue her master’s in law focused on Indigenous governance. She was determined to fight against cultural injustice within her community. “It came to a point where I had to choose between a career where I did great work and had a great pay, and something that truly interests me,” she says. “There was certainly a risk, but this is where my heart is.”

Udy’s interest in human politics started at a young age. Growing up she struggled with her own cultural identity. She was French but rarely spoke the language and felt left out within her circle. This issue influenced her decision to pursue a career in governance. “At the time, when I went to public school, there was so much diversity and I had a group of diverse friends,” she says. “Seeing the issues with them such as racism, sexism, and language, I very much felt for them when they were going through those things and did what I could to support them.”

As a result of her experiences as a youth, Udy has a different way of understanding others. Both of her parents were social workers, which made her think more about the challenges her peers faced. In her mind, there is no sense in questioning why some people are mistreated. Instead, she works to find solutions and fights back. Whether it is through personal support for women dealing with past relationships or helping groups find their voice in society, she is all about making a change.

In early 2006, Udy got involved in the world of non-profits. Since then, she has been a key member and co-founder of several organizations. She has worked at the McGill legal information clinic as a volunteer, and at Dress for Success Montreal, Batshaw Youth and Family Centre Foundation, and La Fédération des Femmes Du Québec as a committee member. In 2015, she also became a Young Québecers Leading Way advisory committee member, supporting the development of new projects and shaping the engagements of youth in our country.

But most recently, Udy helped found Québec Inclusif, a not-for-profit and non-partisan organization that advocates for respect and inclusion of minority groups. The group was established in 2013 when Quebec’s Bill 60, a charter that would “affirm the values of state secularism,” was tabled. Many believed the bill caused an infringement on the rights of religious freedom, as it would limit government workers from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols. In particular, it would stop some women from wearing hijab.

It was Udy’s job to write a manifesto to oppose the law, and she quickly became the main point of contact in the group. Her hard work with Québec Inclusif paid off when the manifesto turned into a petition, which garnered much-needed public attention and support. “Everything we worked for was now coming into plan. It was a great moment of togetherness and community,” Udy says.

The bill was killed after the 2014 Quebec election, when the Quebec Liberal Party proposed a new law in its place, Bill 62. “The [new] law was much more moderate than Bill 60,” says Udy. “It wasn’t perfect but that bill represented a fairer balance of the values of state secularism and freedom of religion.” Today, Québec Inclusif continues its pursuit to battle other problems in the system.

Udy has also balanced all these opportunities while still working a full-time job. She mentions that she hasn’t perfected the act of management but is still working on finding a balance between both worlds. “As much as we like to think there is equality, there are still a lot of emotional expectations as women being caregivers,” she says. “It’s a part of the reason why a lot of people disclose things to me.”

Udy will continue her education this year, and she also hopes to start her own consulting business. But even after her work with Quebec Inclusif, Udy still thinks she could be doing more. She plans on leaving her mark behind, to keep on fighting.

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!

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

Illustration by Dave Donald

A call for co-operative housing reform

After spending the first 23 years of my life living in co-operative housing, I worry “co-operative” has become nothing more than a platitude used to paint a picture of true democracy. Even at the most local of levels, a functioning democracy needs supervision.

Over a quarter of a million Canadians are housed in over 2,000 co-operative housing projects across the country. Whether apartments, townhouses, or a combination of both, co-operatives are established as non-profit corporations, complete with committees and a board of directors, and are—theoretically, at least—run by residents. Residents become members by purchasing a small share in the co-operative and continue to pay monthly “housing charges,” a term used to differentiate the arrangement from “rent” in a typical landlord-tenant relationship.

Many co-ops were created as mixed-income communities in an attempt to avoid the ghettoization of the poor, and rely on individuals assuming a degree of personal responsibility. Members commit to putting in a small number of volunteer hours a month for the upkeep of their co-op, anything from mowing common grounds to conducting unit inspections. Every now and again, members get together and have meetings to elect a board, vote on an eviction, change the bylaws, or sort out any issues that arise, in a one-member-one-vote system.

But these defining features are by no means universal. Some co-ops hire a property manager or co-op co-ordinator and, in rare cases, co-ops are run by board members who do not actually live there. In others, rather than buying shares, members make loans, and some don’t require members to put in volunteer hours.

Crucially, there is no single regulatory body that oversees all housing co-ops. The sector is a muddle of acts, bylaws, and government and non-profit agencies.

The only national, umbrella co-op housing organization is the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada. CHF Canada, itself a co-operative corporation, is primarily a lobbying group, focused on policy changes and acquiring funds from government on behalf of housing co-ops. There are regional associations for housing co-ops, and an agency that took over responsibilities from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation for federal co-ops in P.E.I., Ontario, Alberta and B.C. The other provinces and territories have their own schemes.

This confusion has created a sector which is barely understood by many in it, let alone those on the outside. As a result, the sector is largely left to its own devices, requests for financial records are denied.

Members who raise concerns with the lack of oversight and issues of governance in co-op housing are often given the runaround or subsequently targeted as dissidents. Ken Hummel, a co-op resident from Whitby, Ont., who for the last 15 years has tried to hold his housing co-op accountable by requesting information on audits, raising issues of favouritism, and filing complaints with police and government, is constantly told to find solutions internally.

“I had shared my concerns and complaints about [my co-op’s] governance and management problems with CHF Canada and CHF Canada referred me back to the co-op board of directors to find some resolution with issues,” writes Hummel in an email.

A member in Toronto was recently told by her co-op’s lawyer “to remove my digital footprint anywhere on the internet where I may have talked about co-ops suggesting I was disparaging them or receive a ‘notice to appear’ for consideration for eviction.” These kinds of actions create an environment of fear and submission in co-ops, something most outside the sector rarely understand.

Nicole Chaland, the Community Economic Development program director at Simon Fraser University, established a housing co-op in Victoria, B.C. a decade ago with strong ideals and high expectations. She envisioned a community-supported lifestyle, separate from the “paternalistic” system of a mainstream, managed housing provider. Though she didn’t live in the co-op she co-founded (a stipulation of a financial backer), Chaland saw the factionalism develop.

“The potential for built-in resentment is all there,” she says. “I think housing co-ops are particularly difficult because you actually have to cooperate with your neighbours and there is that opportunity for resentment to breed.”

Chaland also described the fiction she was sold early on that coops are cheaper to run due to lower operating costs. “Every single co-op is doing two things at the same time,” she adds, “you’re running a business and you’re nurturing an association of people. And that means the costs are higher.”

There are, naturally, some advantages to the co-op model. Through her research on housing co-ops, Catherine Leviten-Reid, assistant professor at the Shannon School of Business at Cape Breton University, discovered that members who actively participated benefited from “skills development, the development of self-confidence, social ties and the ability to influence the housing in which one lives.” There is no doubt that many housing co-ops do work well. But there are too many that don’t.

Victims of abuse, harassment, and fraud are left naked before their management, with nowhere to turn for help. By design, many co-op members are economically vulnerable, unable to afford representation or represent themselves.

Co-op housing represents so many appealing concepts, which is why it’s hard to find anybody who doesn’t support it on principle. A recent bill to amend the co-op legislation in Ontario received all-party support. Co-ops symbolize participatory democracy, social justice, redistribution of wealth, DIY—so many progressive movements rolled into one. They’ve maintained the impression they are bastions of true democracy, a place for the people by the people, while the number of people practicing these ideals has become smaller and smaller.

“That’s a small radical subset of the housing co-op movement in Canada,” says Chaland. “This isn’t really part of our culture. We teach competition. We teach persuasiveness, we teach winners and losers. And these things are at odds with co-op principles.”

JOSH HAWLEY is a writer, editor, and musician living in Montreal. He studied journalism at Concordia University

Illustration by Matt Daley

Why the Canadian government needs to hit refresh on its digital strategies

When former Public Safety Minister Vic Toews stood in the House of Commons and proclaimed that anyone who didn’t support the government’s new Lawful Access legislation was standing with the child pornographers, the Internet collectively decided he was being ridiculous. When MP Dean Del Mastro compared ripping a CD to buying socks and then stealing shoes (because, you know, feet), the Internet collectively decided he was being profoundly stupid.

The Internet wasn’t wrong.

And it’s not that Toews is a ridiculous guy or that Del Mastro is actually stupid, but there’s a disconnect between the digital policies they’re advocating and the way people actually use digital technology. Wanting privacy doesn’t mean you support molesting children and converting your music collection doesn’t make you a thief. Obviously.

This isn’t strictly an attack on the current Conservative government. Previous governments didn’t really have to deal with these issues. Consider how far we’ve come since Stephen Harper first came to power in 2006, before the iPhone was a thing or the words “big” and “data” had collided in a sentence. But newness doesn’t excuse the tenuous grasp elected officials like Toews and Del Mastro have on both the technical and cultural aspects of modern technology. Either they aren’t the right people to be working on these policies or, more frightening, it’s a problem that permeates the entire House of Commons—a group whose average age is 53, with only a handful of millennials (the only generation with the opportunity to have internalized so many digital issues) who all belong to the minority opposition.

Whether it’s age or politics, the sitting government has already repeatedly whiffed on digital policy. Most disappointing was when Industry Minister James Moore introduced Digital Canada 150 in April, a strategy document designed to put digital priorities front and centre, but was  panned for lacking any sort of real vision or concrete plans (Michael Geist called it a strategy document lacking much in way of actual strategy). It was a document that took a staggering four years to produce, which means much of the data used pre-dates the iPad and Netflix streaming and a lot of other things we take for granted today.

The shortcomings of Digital Canada 150 became apparent with subsequent legislation. Bill C-13, officially the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, was supposed to be a huge step toward combatting cyberbullying. Unfortunately, it also includes a pile of provisions that have nothing to do with cyberbullying, and has been strongly criticized for allowing investigative overreach without judicial oversight, while stripping away the privacy protections many Canadians assume they have. It’s a wide-reaching bill that was heavily scrutinized by a small group of people who enjoy heavily scrutinizing these things, but was largely sold to the general public as something that would save our kids from the scourge of bullies on the Internet. In short, C-13 has never received the public discussion it deserves and, while not straight out of 1984, does have an Orwellian feel to it.

More curious than sinister was Bill C-23, the much discussed Fair Elections Act. In a world where we can pay bills, buy groceries, and file taxes online, C-23 offers substantial electoral reform without ever broaching the subject of online voting. In fact, the infrastructure needed to make online voting a reality isn’t really on anyone’s roadmap, which is crazy if you really think about it. (This isn’t just a Canadian problem and, oddly, it’s Estonia that leads the way with a comprehensive digital identification program that’s required at every level of government.)

Technology touches everything—justice, privacy, resources, copyright, access to information, entertainment, democracy itself—so robust and complex digital policies are necessary. It’s not just enough that our politicians understand this stuff, which they mostly don’t (if you don’t believe me, you haven’t listened to an MP try to clearly and accurately define “metadata” or “net neutrality”), they need to ensure we understand it, too. Balance on these issues is important: balance between companies and consumers, law enforcement and citizens, government and taxpayers. But keep in mind that half of all of those equations is people—we are the consumers and citizens and taxpayers. And, generally speaking, when an issue isn’t being widely discussed and properly understood, it’s the people that are getting screwed.

In the late ’90s, the Canadian government debuted what was supposed to be a new, golden era of rehabilitation in women’s prisons. Yet, less than two decades later, the dream has failed. What one former inmate’s struggles and successes tell us about a broken system

RIGHT BEFORE WE MEET FOR THE FIRST TIME, AVA* SENDS A TEXT. “I got here early.” She includes a description: the blonde woman wearing black. My bike bumps along Toronto’s Dundas Street bringing me closer to the café where we’ve agreed to meet. It’s an airy café, fairly full. Neatly framed artwork has been arranged, carefully decorating its walls. On this late October 2013 evening, it’s about a half hour until sunset. Nearly golden light streams in and coffee cups clink on saucers as I walk down the row of tables looking for Ava. A blonde woman sits alone. I see her from the back first. She’s wearing black. It’s her.

We introduce ourselves politely. When Ava smiles the corners of her eyes crinkle a little. Her blonde hair falls in soft waves just past her shoulders. She wears a freshly scented fragrance and subtle makeup. At 41, she wouldn’t look out of place lecturing behind a university podium, dashing down Bay Street in the morning, or picking a child up from school. Ava starts our conversation with, “I like your nail polish,” and in the same girlish raspy voice she says, “My story is complicated.” For the past several years, Ava has been a prisoner inside Grand Valley Institute, a Kitchener, Ont.-based federal institute for women. She began serving her sentence in 2007, and was released on early parole in 2008; by 2009, she’d re-offended and was back in prison. In May 2013 she was released on parole again, a series of drug trafficking and fraud charges behind her—or at least starting to be.

While at Grand Valley, Ava earned a degree from Laurentian University. She is now going to college, planning a career helping women who have been abused. On the surface, it all sounds good, but as Ava has told me, her story is complicated. While she’s believes she held privileges in prison—being white-skinned and educated— in many ways, she also thrived despite the criminal justice system. She’s a rare success story born from a poorly-run prison, where the system is anything but conducive to rebuilding women’s lives—even though, as a rethink of the punitive model, it was designed to do exactly that. In a very real sense, she is one of the lucky unlucky ones. Ava tells me she recently moved out of the halfway house, where, as part of her parole, she was mandated to live from May until October. The server brings her a mug of chai tea and almond milk as I do the math: This is her fifth day of complete independence in years. Ava looks up at the server. “Can I have two sugars, too?”

A CANADIAN WOMAN with a sentence of two years or more serves her time in federal prison. Orange is the New Black may have viewers captivated by the idea of what serving time is like but there’s more going on between scenes—in the Canadian system and at Grand Valley in particular. Between March 2010– March 2012, the population of federally sentenced women topped 600 for the first time, representing a 21 percent increase in just two years. Inside the grey of Grand Valley, women live packed like maraschino cherries in a jar. There, the population is about 180, or three times what the institution was originally designed to accommodate. Gymnasiums, visiting units, and the interview room of the maximum security unit have become makeshift cells. The max unit, where high-security offenders stay, now has two beds in cells that were only designed to hold one.

On top of this, Canada’s prison ombudsperson, Howard Sapers, is concerned about violence in Canada’s women’s institutions. Inmate fights, use-of-force interventions, self-harm, and charges during prison stays and are all trending in the wrong direction. About 69 percent of women offenders also needed mental-health treatment in 2010–2011. Most of the women, 85 percent, have physical abuse in their past and 68 percent have been sexually abused. Family visits are rare—there are only five female-only prisons in Canada (plus a healing lodge) and many incarcerated women have been transported great distances. Sometimes prisoners’ families are even blocked from getting inside.

Grand Valley wasn’t supposed to be like this. Opened in 1997, the prison was designed to be an alternative to the Kingston Prison for Women’s (P4W) rigid and inhospitable environment. Until its closure in 2000, the Kingston prison housed every woman convicted of a federal offence in the country, no matter which corner of Canada she came from. During its 66 years, the prison was under constant scrutiny. From its opening until 1993, it faced 13 investigations commissioned by the government, many of which suggested the prison be shut down. Lack of programming, education, and therapy combined with distance from family lead to inmate despair, depression, claustrophobia, self-harming, and suicide. Between 1977–1991, at least 12 women committed suicide while incarcerated.

In response, the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women, including members of the government and advocacy groups such as the Elizabeth Fry Society and the Native Women’s Association of Canada, released a report called “Creating Choices” in April 1990. It outlined areas that needed to be improved for women serving their sentences. After its release, it was decided the Kingston Prison for Women was unfit and would close (at least in theory) in 1994. Then, in the year it was supposed to have closed, a video surfaced, showing an April incident in which male guards brought eight inmates out of their cells for strip searches; they cavity searched seven of the eight the following day. At one point, inmates were also left in empty cells wearing nothing but paper gowns, and in restraints and leg irons. It was a pivotal point in garnering media attention—and even more criticism. It took from 1990–2000 for every single woman to be moved out of the prison and then it finally shut its doors for good on May 8, 2000, when the last woman left.

Kingston’s closure was meant to mark a move toward the new values outlined by the “Creating Choices” document. As the title suggests, it said new values would help create choices for women inmates, operating under the premise they would then be better functioning members in the community upon their release. “Creating Choices” identified key problems facing federally-sentenced women: they were among those who had most suffered from sexism, racism, physical, and sexual abuse, plus poor education and employment. The report’s authors concluded these women didn’t need more punitive measures, but empowerment, programs, and work options to take responsibility for their lives inside prison—positive behaviour that would
ideally extend beyond prison life. In addition to promoting rehabilitative-focused programming, the report declared women were housed with little access to fresh air, light, and social interaction, all detrimental factors to healthy rehabilitation.

When Grand Valley first opened, things were optimistic. It embodied the five principles of “Creating Choices” (empowerment, meaningful and responsible choices, respect and dignity, a supportive environment, and shared responsibility), right down to the cottage-style buildings, where a woman’s children and family could come and live for
extended visits. Back then, it only housed 64 women. For incarcerated women’s advocates, it was a much needed change for Canada. “It opened under a whole new vision for how correction for women in Canada was going to operate,” says Father Con O’Mahony, a former Grand Valley chaplain. “It was geared towards a much more
integrated experience for the woman.” One, he adds, that worked well for the first few years.

O’Mahony finally left Grand Valley in 2009, after spending 13 years watching its once great plans disintegrate. He first began to see things change after the federal Conservative government began to implement the first wave of “tough on crime” policies in the mid-2000s. O’Mahony became further disquieted when he noticed inmates’ mental health issues had began to largely be addressed through medication, and nothing else. Then, there was the overcrowding—and worse. Programming was cut. In 2010, the inmates at Grand Valley filed over 120 formal complaints with the Official of the Correctional Investigator, more than any other women’s prison in Canada. In 2012, the Conservative government sliced $295 million from CSC’s overall budget over a two year period. But, there were little things, too.

Guards who once wore casual clothes came dressed in dark navy uniforms. They began to carry what O’Mahony says looked like tasers. Before things started to change, he was buzzed through only one door before entering a main area where women would approach to talk. “I think it encouraged adults to be adults and it encouraged adult conversation,” he says. Now though, there are two levels of security before reaching the entry area. Everybody gets screened. When he went in for mass, often his Bible or his identification were swabbed for drugs. “It was a very different feel,” he says. Now, a disoriented Grand Valley has lost its sense of direction and is heading backwards, fast—taking most of its female inmates along with it.

BEFORE SHE WAS AN INMATE, Ava cross-country skied along Sudbury trails. She studied religious studies at Laurentian University. She made gift baskets to sell in the café she coowned with her boyfriend. But these are the highlights. When I first met her in October, Ava described her life as “dark and bleak” but left it there. Seven months later, she fills in her story. “I had several experiences of sexual abuse starting from the age of four.” She notes that the majority of incarcerated women have been sexually abused—that’s a common theme. “To be brutally honest, yes I mean rape.”

Her relationship with the boyfriend who she owned the café with started in her mid-20s and lasted roughly five years. It became violent in the early stages. Ava’s mother was also abused. So was her grandmother. Still, Ava says she found her place in the café, and loved it. She got along well with the customers and liked making their gift baskets. But slowly, the abuse became too much. She left the relationship and, shortly after,
her northern Ontario town, heading to Toronto for a fresh start. But things continued to go in the same direction. “I’d escape from one abusive relationship to another and leave with nothing but the clothes on my back and try to start over,” she says. “Eventually I just kind of gave up.” In one of our interviews, she tells me it feels like it was inevitable for her life to go in the direction it did, but then adds: “what’s different for me is that I was able to move past it.”

In Toronto, Ava got a reputation for being impulsive. She moved to the city at age 30. There were times when she abandoned her apartment, not giving her lease a second thought. She got involved in another abusive relationship. She kicked him out; he stole everything from her. He was a con man and had ripped off a lot of people already. “They came looking for him and raped and beat me. I got evicted from my apartment.”

From there, Ava turned to crime for the first time. In 2001, she started selling cocaine, then got into sex work, then started using the cocaine to recover from the sex work, then made her way to heroin which she both used and sold. At one point, right before she got arrested, she tried to pull away from her lifestyle and had even started making gift baskets again. But just a few months after she was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover police officer and possessing firearms. Found guilty, she was sentenced to five years in prison. After a year, she was released on early parole. She returned to crime and violated her order within days. “I was like, ‘I don’t give a shit,’” she says. “Everyone’s told me I’m a piece of shit so that’s what I am and that’s what I’ll continue to be.’” After her parole violation, she was sentenced to an additional three years and four months.

“I work hard to achieve things and then I just fuck them up,” Ava says. “While I’ve been impulsive, I’ve also been the kind who likes to lay down roots and build things. I’m self-destructive and destroy them, which probably led to the impulsivity … That’s why I have this tattoo.” She rolls up her sleeve and inscribed in cursive is a message about not tearing down what you’ve built for yourself. She got it in Grand Valley.

AVA’S FIRST STOP ON THE WAY to Grand Valley was the Vanier Centre for Women, a provincial jail in Milton, Ont. If a sentence is less than two years, a person stays in a provincial jail, but many women are also held in custody in a provincial jail as they await their sentence. Ava lived in the high security area of Vanier from March 2009–March 2011 before being transferred.

“It’s actually so scary,” she says. The first time she entered the doors of Vanier she says, women were in her face: “What have you got? Do you have a package?” They meant drugs. In provincial jail, there’s no methadone treatment. You wait until you get out or get to federal prison. On her first stay, Ava walked past plenty of women who were throwing up or had diarrhea. Withdrawal. It’s a dirty place. There is no soap for your hands. When someone left the bathroom, someone else would say, “so and- so’s been smoking crack again.” Some women tucked drugs into their bodies; other women knocked them out in the shower to get them. One day, while being escorted out of the high security range to visit a social worker, a guard looked at her and said, “She’s a fucking waste of time.”

Every day for every meal, she would line up for a spoon. She lined up to give it back. She usually didn’t hand it back. Instead, she stuck it through a hatch. Most guards wouldn’t touch it, but some would take it from her with a glare. At night, she would go back her cell, back to her mattress on the floor. Clean laundry was still dirty. Sometimes, there would be no socks for a week. The metal door with the slot for meals stayed shut. “It’s a relief when you get to Grand Valley,” she says. “Believe it or not.”

IN GRAND VALLEY, Ava lived in a unit with 10 women. Everyone at the prison receives a food budget of $35.56 per week. While there, Ava would make her list and then another woman picked up the items at the prison’s industrial food area. On a typical day, she would wake-up at 5:30 or 6 a.m., make breakfast, and go to work. During her time there, she filled a number of positions—librarian, photographer, and member of the inmate committee. She received a release to work at the Humane Society. The highest a woman can earn at Grand Valley is just shy of $7 per day, a
wage that has been static since 1981. Pay is situation-dependent and can be as low as $1 per day. Women use the wages to buy basic hygiene needs and pay phone fees to call family. (Just this past fall though, a new rule was established requiring inmates to give 30 percent of their pay back for room and board.) Ava likes buying shoes. She would save her $6 daily wage for months and months, eventually picking the exact right pair from the prison’s Nike catalogue.

While many women at Grand Valley worked, others slept away their sentences, she says. At Grand Valley, there is a 90-day evaluation period before an inmate can be entered in core programming. Oftentimes, though, there’s a waiting list for programming as well, and there is no guarantee a woman will start programming after the evaluation period. Inmates cannot apply for parole until the programming is complete. Ava has seen women begin their mandatory programming so late, they miss their chance to do so. “The beds are staying full,” she says, “and nobody’s moving.”

The work day for inmates lasts the full morning. After work, Ava would head back to her unit in time for the guards’ regular 11:15 a.m. headcount. Ava’s clearance came each day at about 12:30 p.m. From there, she went to programs until 4 p.m. Then,
another count. It cleared at 5:30 p.m. After that, free time until 9 p.m. Ava would usually head to the gym. “That was my sanity place,” she says. “That’s what I loved to do.” In the beginning they had a weight room, but it was later turned into a guard’s office. At one point, there was a step aerobics class. The steps broke, but they used them that way anyway—until they got taken away. Eventually the women received a new shipment of cardio equipment: one elliptical, two treadmills, and two bikes. Ava says the women fought over them constantly. Sometimes Ava would watch TV after. Inmates are allowed 15-inch sets in their cells. They have to pay for cable, whether they have a TV or not.

At Grand Valley, there was one thing that Ava could use to move herself forward. Ava had started a degree in 1992, but says she quit one credit short of graduating. Initially, she just wanted to finish that credit, and decided to take a women’s studies course through correspondence. “Then I was like, ‘Hey, I would really like to continue studying this.’ So I had to do 36 credits in women’s studies.” While many of Grand Valley’s once-big ambitions have shrunk, it still offers post-secondary correspondence courses through Laurentian University, as well as the Inside-Out program. Facilitated by Wilfrid Laurier University in the case of Grand Valley, the program trains professors from across Canada to go into institutions to teach a class that is a mixture of students from the university and students from the prison.

Inside-Out started in the U.S. in 1997 and runs in 25 states. It started in Grand Valley in 2011 with 10 “outside” students and seven “inside” students. The program offers courses through the faculty of social work and the faculty of arts at Wilfrid Laurier and receives funding from the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation, which gives grants to support education and children’s initiatives in the Waterloo region. Wilfrid Laurier University provides texts and bursaries for incarcerated students. For Ava, it was intimidating, especially her first day of class. “On our end,” she says, “we’re like ‘Oh my God these are university students, they are going to think we’re dumb.’”

She also worried the students would notice she only had blue, stained institute T-shirts to wear. What about her pants? Would these students judge her for wearing the same ones every week? “Sometimes it sounds really vain, my worries in there,” she says. “It makes you feel like you stand out and all you want to do is just blend in.” Her worries didn’t turn into reality. She began to look forward to her Inside-Out classes every week. Inmate students didn’t want class to end and for the outside students to leave. “It was really over and above anything we had hoped for,” she says. And between those classes and her correspondence courses, she managed to finish her degree and graduate on June 8, 2013. “It felt absolutely amazing,” she says. “I am the only woman in the history of GVI to have completed a degree while being there.”

AVA WAS RELEASED from Grand Valley on May 22, 2013. She went into prison with few chances for a successful future—and doesn’t downplay her degree. “Unless you’re released from prison and learn something new, you’re exactly where you started,” she says. “The fact that I was able to work on my degree, get involved in Inside-Out, I’m now in college full-time— that’s given me all the direction I needed to try and change. If none of that happened, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now. I really don’t know.” That might make it seem like Creating Choices is still alive. Not quite.

“The GVI that opened in 1997 is not the GVI we have today,” says O’Mahony. Ava points to one, big roadblock on the way to education: If women at Grand Valley want to take university correspondence courses, they have to find a way to finance them— something that’s incredibly difficult to do on a salary of less than $7 a day. At one point, inmates could get an Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) bursary called Ontario Special Bursaries which awarded a student up to $2,500. Those were last offered for the 2010- 2011 year though before they were cut from the Ontario budget. Before the bursaries were cancelled, says Ava, 30 women were studying post-secondary inside Grand Valley via correspondence. The next year, that number dropped to two. Ava paid for school through scholarships, a $500 grant from the Elizabeth Fry Association (a group that helps incarcerated women) and a different grant from OSAP.

Outside of Grand Valley, Ava says she’s lonely, that she has no friends, and has only been to the movies once. She’s not allowed to talk to anyone from prison because
she’s on parole. She feels displaced. Prices have changed. Muffins used to be $1, now they are $2. She took a trip to Shoppers Drug Mart recently, but left. The tattoo underneath her sleeve is a reminder to stay on course. She talks about these things and about her life of abuse and drugs and her women’s studies degree that she had to fight so hard for inside a penitentiary that has become hardened and strict. Somewhere on a bridge above the Don Valley River on our way to her boxing class, she stops and says “I like walking across bridges.”

Before we walk through the gym’s doors, she stops again and tells me she’s wearing two pairs of pants. She says quickly, her tone hushed: “It’s a habit from prison,” where the cells were cold and an extra pair of pants meant an extra layer of protection between her skin and filth. Months later, she tells me she’s always worried that something will send her back to Grand Valley—that everything she’s worked for is all hanging together by a string and that it could snap so easily. Sometimes in the city, she comes face-to-face with women from her prison days, still stuck in the cycle.

The other boxers don’t know about Grand Valley yet (although, tired of living a double life, she will later tell them).During the workout she’s smiling, making wisecracks. “It looks easier than it is,” she says, even though she jumps at the chance to use the weighted ball. With every exercise she adds a twist making it more challenging. The gym blasts OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” and has a brown-haired, freckle-faced coach who says that every woman needs a heavy bag to punch. “Better out than in,” she says. Throughout the gym the sound of gloves hitting and bouncing off punching bags echo. Here, at least, Ava moves with ease.

 *name changed to protect privacy

What would happen if housing were enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? One activist’s inside account of the radical new fight to end homelessness

In 1996, fresh out of high school, I co-founded the Calgary chapter of the anti-poverty activist group Food Not Bombs, together with a group of youth active in the local punk music scene. We collected donations of food and served vegetarian meals to the hungry and homeless in front of City Hall, an outdoor soup-kitchen and weekly protest rolled into one.

We couldn’t stand by as the number of people without homes in boomtown Calgary continued to rise; by 1999 estimates put the number of homeless at almost 4,000 people.We sent letters to politicians, held rallies, and spoke to the press. No one should go hungry, we argued—after all, food did grow on trees. And we knew without a shadow of a doubt that housing was a human right.

Canada prides itself as “a consistently strong voice for the protection of human rights,” and has signed onto many international human rights covenants. It was a Canadian, John Peters Humphrey, who was the principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Together with the UN General Assembly, Canada adopted the historic document in 1948, which guarantees everyone the right to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”

Despite this guarantee, the numbers of homeless people in Calgary has remained largely unchanged; in 2008, the city counted 3,601 people without a home. In 2014, that number sits at 3,533—and many other Canadian cities face the same high, stagnant rates.

Almost 15 years after those first small actions, I was privileged to stand outside a courthouse in downtown Toronto as four individuals and the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA) filed a historic legal challenge against the Canadian and Ontario governments. The housing and homelessness crisis had only deepened over the years, and these activists intended to hold Canada to its 1948 promise. They wanted the Court to declare homelessness itself a human rights violation and to rule that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the government had a responsibility to end it.

“Across the county and in Toronto, various activities have been employed to end homelessness, from research on the health effects of homelessness to meetings with politicians and protests,” says Cathy Crowe, a street nurse and voluntary executive director of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. “It’s hard to imagine one thing that hasn’t been tried, and done really well, by groups across the country.” Crowe is one of 12 expert witnesses who provided evidence in support of the legal challenge. “It felt to us way back, that we should go to court.”

The legal system isn’t the only avenue for marginalized people to seek justice. But, after years of organizing to end homelessness with few victories to celebrate, the possibility of a court ruling that would force the government to act was an exciting prospect.

Supporters have since dubbed the CERA-led case the “Right to Housing” challenge. Unlike past legal skirmishes led by anti-poverty activists, which targeted specific laws—such as those that banned panhandling or sleeping in parks—it is a broad, all-encompassing challenge to government policy. A shared experience of living without adequate, affordable housing brought the applicants together. They deeply wanted to help prevent others from facing the same challenges. Together with the non-profit organization CERA, they argued that the federal and provincial government had failed to implement effective strategies to address homelessness and inadequate housing. As a result, the applicants argued, the governments had deprived them, and others, of “life, liberty, and security of person”—a violation of section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

The case also relies on the rights to equality found in section 15 of the Charter. Women, people with disabilities, aboriginal people, new immigrants, youth, and people from racialized communities experience inadequate housing and homelessness at greater rates than the general population. The applicants argued that by failing to effectively address the housing crisis, Canada and Ontario were “creating and sustaining conditions of inequality.”

“I lost my husband, my children, my home,” says Janice Arsenault, one of the four applicants involved in the legal case. In 2003, her husband, who owned their Pickering, Ont., house together with his mother, died during a routine operation. Heartsick and homeless, she was forced to relinquish custody of her children to her parents. Arsenault ended up living on the street, and then in a series of poorly maintained apartments where she faced abusive roommates and drug-dealing neighbours. “I’m 45 years old. I don’t want to wait ten years to live in a safe place,” says Arsenault, who has struggled to find a decent apartment that she can afford with the money she receives in provincial disability benefits.

In Canada, 200,000 people experience homelessness each year, and at least 1.3 million have experienced homelessness or extremely insecure housing in the past five years. People without adequate housing suffer from a range of health problems, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tuberculosis, skin and foot problems, and others. These conditions are a direct result of, or made worse, by their housing experience. They also face increased risk of violence: a 2007 Toronto-based survey found that 35 percent of homeless individuals experienced physical assault and 21 percent of women experienced sexual assault in the previous 12 months.

Without stable housing, life expectancy is significantly reduced. A 25-year-old woman living in shelters, rooming houses or hotels has a 60 percent chance of living to 75. For men, that chance drops to 32 percent. Even those who have a place to call home face serious challenges. Finding a good, affordable apartment is difficult. Forty percent of renters in Canada spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent; over 400,000 tenant households are living in overcrowded conditions; and at least 370,000 rented homes are in need of major repairs. People wait years to access affordable housing: In Ontario there are 158,445 households on the social housing wait list.

The housing crisis in Ontario hasn’t always been this bad. “Canada has always had many people living in poverty,” University of Toronto researchers noted in their 2009 book Finding Home: Policy Options for Addressing Homelessness in Canada. “But it was only in the 1980s that more and more people found themselves not only poor, but unhoused.”

This trend, caused by the erosion of social programs, grew more exaggerated when the Liberals withdrew all permanent federal funding for social housing in the early ’90s. Since then, successive governments have granted ad hoc funding for programs and new social housing, but none have re-established an ongoing program to support social housing.  “There’s a sort of collective amnesia among people about the loss of the national housing program in 1993,” says Crowe. “The current reliance on the charitable sector is problematic, and it’s a result of the underfunding of social services.”

But, there are others, like Crowe, who haven’t forgotten. In 2010, supporters of the legal case formed the Right to Housing (R2H) Coalition of Ontario. The R2H Coalition included individuals with lived experience of homelessness, as well as academics, workers, and community activists from over a dozen organizations and agencies. In the long periods between court appearances, we organized workshops and rallies to build awareness of Canada’s housing and human rights obligations. On November 22, 2011, R2H joined with the Occupy movement in Toronto to mark National Housing Day. The mood was sombre— the Occupy encampment had recently been served with an eviction notice by Toronto Police, but spirits lifted as the crowd grew in St. James Park. It was clear to me and many of the young activists sleeping in the park that homelessness was one of the starkest examples of the increasing inequality in our society which had sparked the Occupy movement. This event was one of many organized by anti-poverty activists, social service agencies, and tenant groups over the years of the housing crisis.

This sustained advocacy has not gone unnoticed by politicians, both within and outside the governing parties. In May of 2012, members of all federal parties voted in favour of a non-binding motion that acknowledged that the government has an obligation to “respect, protect and fulfill the right to housing.” A few months prior, in February, the federal NDP had introduced the Act to Secure Adequate, Accessible and Affordable Housing for Canadians to create a national housing strategy to fulfill that obligation. Members of the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois vowed to support the bill when it came time for its second reading vote on February 27, 2013. In the lead-up to the vote, advocates called and wrote to backbencher Conservative MPs from across the country, who were free to vote with their conscience. There was hope that a few MPs, seeing the problems that lack of affordable housing were causing in their ridings, might vote in favour of the bill.

Yet, on the morning of the vote, Conservative MP Tony Clement, president of the treasury board, held a press conference and characterized the private member’s bill as a “dangerous and risky NDP spending scheme.” This statement was intentionally misleading, as private members’ bills cannot allocate funds without government approval. In the end, Clement’s message found its mark, the bill was defeated 153 to 129, with all Conservative MPs voting against it.

Housing advocates have long argued the idea that it is too expensive to end homelessness is a red herring. Take, for instance, a 2008 Government of Alberta study that concluded it would cost twice as much to maintain homelessness as it would to end it by building affordable housing and providing social/health supports to those who needed them.“Moving 11,000 individuals and families out of homelessness will require investments of $3.316 billion,” reads “A Plan for Alberta: Ending Homelessness In 10 Years.” “This is far lower than the cost of simply managing them.”

Outside of Canada, there are examples of countries addressing homelessness and the right to housing. Decades of organizing and public education in Scotland paid off when the government passed a law in 2003 ensuring that anyone who is unintentionally homeless has a right to settled accommodation. Individuals without housing can apply to a regional council which has a legal duty to provide them with permanent housing. If there aren’t any units available at the time, the council must provide them with temporary housing—a bed in a shelter is not enough. France passed a similar piece of legislation in 2007. Section 26 of the South African Bill of Rights declares: “Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s precisely the kind of legal obligation seen in other countries that the governments of Canada and Ontario oppose. This attitude has made the Right to Housing case a hard fight. In 2012, the governments brought forward a motion to strike the case before it began. Rather than debate the evidence and present their own counter-arguments, they wanted the case to be thrown out without any of the evidence being heard by the Court.

“The use of a motion to strike by the government in an important Charter case like this is deeply troubling,” explains Tracy Heffernan, from the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, one of three lawyers who represented the applicants. “It can serve to quell dissent and prevent the voices of marginalized groups asserting Charter violations from being heard before the courts on a full evidentiary record.”

On May 27, 2013, three years after the case was filed, I sat in a packed courtroom watching Superior Court Justice Thomas R. Lederer preside over the motion. At the end of the three-day hearing, the Justice reserved judgment. He needed time to carefully consider the arguments put forward by both sides.

The judgment arrived four months later, on a Friday afternoon in September. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice agreed with the government. Lederer ruled that it was “plain and obvious” that the case could not succeed, and struck the case. Contrary to Canada’s pledge under the Declaration of Human Rights, it seemed, this decision made it plain that there is no right to housing in Canada. “This will come as a shock to those in Canada and the international community who have been assured that Canada recognizes access to adequate housing as a fundamental human right and that the most marginalized are protected under the Charter,” Leilani Farha of CERA said at the time.

The ruling was a clear setback, but we refused to mourn. The court is one venue to assert the right to housing, the streets another. In November 2013, the R2H Coalition helped organize a week of actions from Victoria to St. John’s in support of social housing funding and a strategy to end homelessness. In Toronto, over a 100 people gathered in the rain at Yonge-Dundas square, and our cries of “housing is a right, we won’t give up the fight” echoed off the buildings around us.

The Right to Housing applicants appealed Lederer’s decision and the Ontario Court of Appeal heard the case at the end of May 2014. In addition to arguments from the applicants and the governments, a panel of three judges considered submissions from eight intervenor groups who supported the case, including Amnesty International, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund. “The proper role of the Court in this case,” wrote the Charter Committee Coalition in its intervention factum. “[Is] to provide the ‘last line of defense’ for some of the most marginalized and powerless members of Canadian society.”

As of June, there’s no way to know how long we will have to wait for the Court of Appeal decision. A positive Appeal ruling would mean that the case could continue, and Arsenault and the other applicants could finally present evidence that shows the depth of the housing crisis and its impact on human rights. It could be years before we see a final ruling, unless the applicants lose at the Court of Appeal. A negative appeal decision could mean the end of the case; the applicants would pursue a Supreme Court of Canada appeal, but there is no guarantee such an appeal would be allowed, let alone successful.

Regardless of the final outcome of the legal case, Arsenault remains steadfast in her conviction that no one in Canada should be without a safe, affordable place to live. “As a human being, I have a right to adequate housing,” says Arsenault. “It’s not just for myself. I want to fight for everyone.”

Yutaka Dirks lives in Toronto. His writing has been long-listed for the CBC Literary Prize for Creative Non-Fiction and his fiction and non-fiction work has appeared in Briarpatch, Ricepaper Magazine, and Rhubarb Magazine. A long-time social justice activist and community organizer, he contributed essays to Beautiful Trouble: A toolbox for revolution, published by O/R Books in 2012.

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!